5. Modern media favors perception over reality, charisma over intelligence, and personality over character. Republicans remain the party dominated by reality, intelligent reason, and high character; they lose.

While many conservatives tend to focus entirely on leftist media bias as the primary reason Republicans lose so many public-perception contests, this is actually only a fraction of the far more serious problem.

The bedrock problem isn’t bias. Opinion research demonstrates again and again that Americans have been exceptionally resilient against vigorous liberal indoctrination on some fundamental issues. With a near-complete media bias promoting abortion “rights,” the American public remains a nation favoring legalized abortion only under certain circumstances or not at all. With a 150-year bombardment by academia promoting the theory of godless evolution — pure Darwinism — Americans are defiantly pro-God as the divine “designer.” With a 40-year attack on the institution of marriage, a bare majority of voters in the past few years has come to favor same-sex unions sanctioned by the state. Christianity is routinely bashed in liberal media, yet 78.4% of Americans still self-identify as Christian. Bias isn’t winning nearly as many arguments as is widely assumed.

It isn’t merely liberal bias that’s helping Democrats but the very medium in which ideas are spread to vast numbers of Americans. Whether it is television news or entertainment, or whether movies or music or even the magazine format, national arguments take place more and more impersonally in formats given to dramatic license. Today there is less and less face-to-face among friends and family. The more we have shifted as a society towards mass media, the more politics has become a popularity contest instead of a fair fight of ideas.

Democrats first recognized the power of the medium when young, charismatic John F. Kennedy debated old, gnarly Richard Nixon on television in 1960. Since that very day, it has been entirely necessary for Republicans to field candidates with not only real substance, intelligence, and character, but also the hard-to-define charisma that translates to popular appeal. But Republicans often ignore this essential demand of the modern era and put forth candidates who don’t stand a chance in the media spotlight.

It is simply no longer enough to be reality-based, intelligent, and moral. To win, modern Republicans must have it all, including media presence and charisma.

But liberal bias does stack the deck profoundly towards Democrats being able to field candidates with none of the essential reality, intelligence, and high character, as long as they possess the façade of charisma. Hence, we have President Barack Obama, in large part because his opponent possessed no media skills whatsoever.

282 Comments, 109 Threads

No, you are wrong in your analysis. it all sounds good, but you are confusing Republican with being on the political Right.

Big government Republicans are on the political Left. They act like Republicans when it comes to thinking, but they sympathize with Leftist goals.

Conservatives are on the Right. They know what is going on, but do not know how to argue. You can say it is yielding to emotional nonsense, but it is not. It is that Conservatives lack the killer instinct of the Left. Nice guys finish last. I’m one of those Conservatives who is not too nice to mix it up. Most are not like me. I have lots of Conservative friends. I know.

I have no problem stating my views around Libs, and they try to try to bully me only once, because I verbally kick their asses the moment they start something. I am not nice about it either. I destroy them.

Of course, I did not respond to the emotional games of my wife, either. Lots of arguments. Most guys have no use for such. They do not want that fight. it’s the unwillingness to have the very stupid argument, that’s all.

You’re right about that…the GOP isn’t really a conservative party. Its leadership is centrist or even center-left. Ninety years ago, they would have been labeled Bolsheviks. Just sayin’.

In any event, I’m a woman, and I’d be ashamed to use those tactics on my husband. The proper response from the husband is, “If you loved ME, then you would show some respect for my efforts to keep this family solvent.”

Where I grew up, “I’m just sayin’” means the speaker does not wish to be blamed for whatever negative emotion is prompted by what he’s sayin’. It means “this is just the plain truth, I am putting it out there as a favor, not to provoke or to anger you”. Usually it is said by someone who does want to provoke you, of course… And, usually, it IS opinion. “I’m just sayin’” is therefore universally regarded as a weak, lame dodge.

On blogs, I use extra words to help indicate my tone. If this were a conversation, we’d hear tone of voice and see hand gestures. Phrases like that help me understand our conversations better (I’d agree it’s not as useful in a debate)

WADR, “right, center-right, moderate, left-leaning…” – these comments are labels and stereotypes at . Or WORSE! I read about half way down this comment section and found the same pitter-patter of which Shiver accused the Republicans. Semantics, my friends. Wordplay we don’t have time for!
Those who agree with Shiver need to hang your heads in shame. Not that you are responsible for how flaming metrosexuals like McCain are handled by bullies. But because you won’t remind the current field of Republicans that this is the REASON McCain lost! And will be the reason THEY will likely lose. (Sorry as usual for the caps. Can’t hardly emphasize points without text editing capabilities.)
Look, I got this blog handed to me by a lunch companion just an hour after I ranted that the Republicans had president aitch on the ropes and wouldn’t throw a punch. My exact statement was, “I get were aitch is ruining this country. What I don’t get is why the Repubs don’t get it!” I am furious with these ID-10-Ts who interrupt MY dinner with phone calls for donations to beat aitch and then spend those donations (Not mine, to be sure!) floundering in a sea of PC, afraid to take a serious whack at the sharks circling their drowning bodies!
If that isn’t a suitable simile, here’s another one. The wheels are coming off aitch’s bus and the Repubs are offering him a ride to the nearest polling place. Ok, so they are afraid of tags like “homophobe racist hate-monger.” That I get. I don’t have to LIKE it, but I get it. But it doesn’t have to BE that way. Wasn’t it Twain who said, “Never wrestle with a pig. You only get dirty and, besides, the pig likes it!?”
In that vein, the only comment above (Or below, however this post falls.) I really agreed with is the one who said s/he doesn’t argue with liberals. THAT is the key. I don’t either. When one asks my opinion, I simply ask, “Are you asking MY opinion or are you inviting me to listen to yours. B-E-C-A-U-S-E(!), I don’t talk opinions; I talk facts.
The difference, you see, is that “facts” can be backed up; opinions can’t! Here’s an example. A local “legend” in the liberal circles wrote in the Arkansas State-wide editorial just today, “unfunded Bush tax cuts.” While, this very week, aitch told the AFL-CIO that one of his accomplishments was a “middle-class tax cut!” Now, what liberal wants to try to split hairs over that one? (Let me re-phrase that. What liberal wants to split hairs over that one with a conservative who has the guts to lash back. (Remember, not arguing, but quoting facts.)
At one time, I failed to understand why people had so much difficulty understanding our position. Now? I fail to understand the Republican position! Or if there is one. (Don’t stop me, I’m on a roll.) Here’s what I mean; what I challenge you all with –
The majority of Conservative/Tea Party/Republican voters say they want “big government (Read, WADC) out of their lives. At least the ones I talk to say that. THEN, when I ask them who they will vote for in the primary, I get an almost universal answer. To wit, “The one who can do the most to solve our problems!” (Or, variant, “I don’t know. I haven’t heard how they’re going to create jobs or solve the economic problems…” etc!)
Does anyone else see a problem with this dichotomy? Yeah? Then why are WE attacking the “wimpy” Republican field and at the same time not attending these rallies, emailing the candidates and withholding our contributions until we get it across to them that we don’t WANT their help?!
Let me qualify that. (Enough of you will take this out of context anyway.) Government exists to provide two services. 1) Protect us from our enemies. 2) Protect us from each other. (To include regulating interstate commerce.)
When a candidate tells ME s/he will protect me from planes crashing into my office building and keep my neighbor (Or neighboring state.) from robbing me blind and THEN swears s/he will get out of my way and let me provide for my family the best way I can, (Protecting THEM from ME when necessary.) they will get my vote and my check!
Until we can each say that, until we can each write, call or shout down our own candidates who swear to stop the aitch admin oppression while telling me how THEY will run our lives, we may as well just stay home. Cause we aren’t going to get any better than we get rid of.
Meanwhile, let’s not blame a Party or a candidate when our own thinking is that far askew. Er, IMHO, of course.

Absolutely correct. I strive mightily to find libtards to argue with. I’ve even made a couple cry when it comes to the 2nd Amendment. They invariably give me a wide berth at this point. I also infuriate my woman. It’s probably good that I live in the country.

WHEN I WAS AT THE DMV THE OTHER DAY, I HAD STOOD IN LINE FOR NEARLY AN HOUR AND WAS NOW 3RD, WHEN OUT OF NOWHERE A BLACK LADY GOES IN FRONT OF THE LINE AND STARTS SCREAMING AND YELLING ABOUT HOW SHE’S DOUBLE PARKED AND HAD TO GET THIS THING DONE SO SHE CAN GET OUT OF HERE, THE CLERK WAS COURAGEOUS AT FIRST TELLING THE BLACK WOMAN TO GO TO THE BACK OF THE LINE.

BUT THEN THE BLACK WOMAN PUT ON HER GORILLA SUIT AND STARTED TO GET ANGRY ACCUSING EVERYONE OF BEING RACISTS TOWARDS HER. SO TO PLACATE HER, A MANAGER PULLED HER ASIDE AND GAVE HER ONE ON ONE SPECIAL TREATMENT.

I SAW SOMETHING SIMILAR AT THE LAX AIRPORT IN A TSA LINE, WHERE A BLACK MAN PUT ON HIS GORILLA SUIT AND ACCUSED EVERYONE OF BEING RACISTS, THEN THROWING A BELT, WITH A HEAVY BELT BUCKLE, TOWARDS ONE OF THE TSA OFFICERS AND INSTEAD OF GETTING ARRESTED, HE GOT TWO AIRPORT POLICE ESCORTS TO HIS PLANE, HE WAS TREATED LIKE A V.I.P. WITH OFFICERS ADDRESSING HIM AS ‘SIR’.

DON’T BE SCARED OF THE GORILLA SUIT, IT’S A GAME FOR THEM AND BECAUSE WE COWER ALL THE TIME, IT WORKS ALL THE TIME.

i hate it when they do this, because a rational, intelligent, person usually doesn’t know what to do. do you just knock them out senseless? do you reason with them? we need some help here, maybe some police officers on here can give us some practical advise–hopefully, not more ‘cowering’ but action that will deter more bad behavior.

You are so right, the race card is just another tool of the bully. The bully will continue his antics until someone stands up to him, then he backs down. It is time for conservatives to stand up to the liberal bullies and put them in their place.

Yeah, tried that. She easily left for a more pliable guy, took way most of the money too. Woke me up to where rationality habits the American landscape as Ms. (hope that is not an insult) Shriver outlines. She is right, and right.

You’re both right. Republican does not automatically equate to Conservative. KAS plays fast and lose in defining the players and playing field then blithely indulges in what she labels as “female” tactics to make her “case.” Feels alot like the infamous Obama strawman strategy.

Emphasize the differences among Left, Right, and Conservative. Leftism is supported by all those who cannot fit into normal society (perverts, criminals, wackos in general, and aliens to the society). Rightism is supported by those who accept the ‘rules’ which define and maintain their existing society (‘society’: a group of related individuals pursuing conventional goals by conventional means). Conservatism is some kind of intermediate state, which includes Libertarianism (Leftism oriented towards the individual rather than a fantasy collective) as well as people who are suspicious of change as such, but appear to have no serious (willingness to fight and kill for it) stake in existing society. Conservatives would be those people Patrick Henry referred to in his Speech to the House of Burgesses(?) as crying “Peace, Peace.” Rightists are serious defenders of existing society (culture, race, religion, language, tradition). As Leftists, Libertarians do not defend society. Their rationalisation for rejecting society is different from Leftists’, but the effect is the same. Leftists claim society is an artificial construct imposing economic or psychological suppression on naturally good and noble humans. Libertarians also agree that humans are born naturally good, and therefore need not consider society (i.e., other people) in doing whatever they want. It all goes back to accepting or rejecting Human Nature (man is a social animal — Aristotle), as was always known from direct observation and study of history, but is now being explained by science.

Jacobite has his political categories wildly wrong. I tried to present the political divisions that matter here: http://clarespark.com/2009/12/16/perceptions-of-the-enemy-the-left-looks-at-the-right-and-vice-versa/. As for the article, it saddens me to think that the author is looking to a charismatic leader rather than to a more informed and rational political discourse. The authors of the Federalist Papers would be appalled, for they were fearful of monarchism and what would turn into the cult of the Leader. Rather they looked to popular sovereignty and a rational citizenry.

Given that, they’d be sorely disappointed with today’s circumstances, I’m afraid. Debate becomes meaningless when neither side possesses a decent respect for facts, reason, logic and the proper use of language. Jean-Francois Revel lamented the corruption of the very language we use to frame our arguments in this passage from his 1991 The Flight From Truth: The Reign of Deceit in the Age of Information:

“The great misfortune of the twentieth Century is to have been the one in which the ideal of liberty was harnessed to the service of tyranny, the ideal of equality to the service of privilege, and all the aspirations and social forces included under the label of the “Left” enrolled in the service of impoverishment and enslavement. This immense imposture has falsified most of this century, partly through the faults of some of its greatest intellectuals. It has corrupted the language and action of politics down to tiny details of vocabulary, it has inverted the sense of morality and enthroned falsehood in the very center of human thought.”

The Left has been the worst offender, as this is merely another aspect of the methods they’ve employed to achieve their eschatological goal of “burning the old world to reveal the new.”

Your strawman description of libertarianism is completely wrong. They are definitely not leftist, they are pro individual liberty, anti collective, and pro free market. And libertarianism definitely does not allow everybody to do what they wish, irregardless of consequences to others. Their fundamental tenet is no person can harm others with violence, theft, fraud, or gross negligence, so you should never have any fear that a libertarian will harm you. Adult individuals may do something that may harm themselves, that is part of being free, but they can never harm others.

And I might add that it was right wingers like you, that want to enforce their idea of morality through gov, but dont give a hoot about liberty or smaller gov, that brought us Bush 2 and his compassionate conservative garbage. Libertarians saw through that obsene collectivism immediately.

Mind you, I have no problem with people who hold traditional moral views, provided they also beleive in individual liberty and smaller gov. But if you have the morality without respect for liberty, you may as well be Jesse Jackson.

I have a nephew I’ve labeled ‘Parrot’ – he parrots the latest progressive talking points. I’ve destroyed his arguments enough times that he no longer opens his yap when I’m around – unless it’s to talk about the weather. He has no opinion to my retort of his “Bush lied”. Prove it ‘Parrot’ I demand. He knows better. He just can’t help himself.

Now everyone calls him ‘Parrot’.

I saw him lat month at a family reunion – I asked him how that hope and change was working for him (he’s been unemployed for quite some time now) – all he could say is “F@*k you Unk”.

Right. I’ve stopped defending policies because they are put forward by a Republican. If they jibe with my sense of conservatism, I defend them, if they don’t, I criticize them freely as not going far enough, or being flat out wrong, and say why to anyone listening.

Excellent analysis. You left one out: as I argue DAILY with my liberal boss and my liberal co-workers I throw all sorts of facts at them,shut them up and I feel great. The next day, or the next hour, or the next minute, it’s Groundhog day! They start right at the beginning as if nothing happened, making the same argument, calling me the same names as if the prior conversation never happened. How can one ever make progress with this dirty tactic. I look at their eyes and they are blank. They learned NOTHING, or I should say, internalized NOTHING. I’ve been doing this for 11 years in my office and every single day is groundhog day. I threaten that I will start showing up in my pajamas because what’s the point.

I completely agree with you most conservative lack the backbone to fight back. There is not an argument that a conservative can lose and the best way to shut a liberal up is not just to say their wrong but to destroy them and humilate them. My younger brother and I argue this with my parents and middle brother all the time. They say the conservatives dont stoop to their level. No we dont we dont take hostages at ports like liberals but thats not the same thing as kicking some liberal ass.

Sounds like you will be divorced one day. After a life time of ‘in your face attitude,’ your wife will come to regard it as emotional abuse. To shore herself up, she no doubt will be very traditional, and go for another stud first.

The sixth reason, surely, is that conservatives never seem to talk about their policies other than IN COMPARISON TO democrat policies; rather than telling us how they would do a better job, they should focus on the unique benefits their approach would bring the voter.

The democrats have it easier, they are the axis in a viscious circle in which the media hide the disdain in which democrats hold the voter (giving free stuff underscores the paucity of their platform) in return for being messengers bringing glad tidings.

Conservatives realize that, if, as a result of the way you do business, your stable is full of odure, putting on taller boots is not the way to deal with the problem.

And you exemplify another major problem in opposing the Left. I basically agree with most of the author’s points. Most Republican officeholders and activists RUN from any controversy and that’s most attributable to the way people rise to prominence on our side of the ideological ditch. That hail fellow well met from the Chamber, Rotary, trade association, state legislature, etc. is no match for the union or interest group activist who has been nose to nose in adversarial proceedings since his/her college days. That said, we can vett them better in our candidate selection process and train them better through the Party.

The problem you exemplify is your dismissal of a very valid candidate and officeholder like Brown. You can’t really be a leftist and be active in the Republican Party, but it is the Republican Party, not the conservative or libertarian party. Brown is no RINO, he is as much of a Republican as you can be and get elected in a leftest welfare shithole like MA. He couldn’t get elected in a white majority district in Georgia where the preachers pretty much dictate who wins, but nobody from that district in Georgia could get elected to anything in MA.

Brown is a Republican caucus vote and I’ll damn well take anybody who votes to join the Republican caucus over anybody who votes to join the Democrat caucus, and the Republican Party could do with a Helluva lot more people who understand that in order to govern well, you must first govern.

Art Chance says: “Brown is no RINO, he is as much of a Republican as you can be and get elected in a leftest welfare shithole like MA.”

…and what does that say about Mitt Romney?

But I can’t let this pass:
“He couldn’t get elected in a white majority district in Georgia where the preachers pretty much dictate who wins”

Sorry, but other than in traditionally black churches, where they get a pass, NO preacher comes anywhere close to endorsing/non-endorsing political candidates — the threat of losing non-profit status, which would (a) require the church itself to pay taxes and (b) eliminate the deductibility of members’ contributions — that threat has pretty well muzzled the political leanings of church pastors. Sadly.

Unless they are black, and are pushing the Standard Democratic Platform.

The closest any other preacher will come to that line is to gently say something like “I hope you will all prayerfully consider the plight of the unborn when casting your vote next Tuesday” or similar. NEVER mention a name…

It is very concerning that many personally conservative voters(hard working, modest, honest, thrifty, self motivated, indivdually responsible, TAX PAYING)seem incapable/unwilling to recognize the stark contrasts ‘twixt the parties. They have been so captured(often obliviously)by the lefts near total control of the cultural narrative insisting that anyone Repub, white, tea party or evangelical must be a segragationist, whippin’ post, bigoted monster! This near complete success of convincing actually conservative voters that Repub=tea party, and tea party=snake handlin’, consanguinious, sexist, racist, anti-abortion radicals is disheartening. Boy do we need a Great Communicator!!

This is probably the most important column written in a very long time. And every candidate out there who wants to whip these bastards into oblivion should read it. In fact, they should hold seminars about its salient points. Why can’t the right start hurling a few names around? Lord knows there’s quite a selection to choose from. Think like the right, act like the left. Should have started doing this decades ago.

Right on, Betina. This column hit me like a bolt of lightning. Conservatives absolutely should hold seminars on how to beat the left’s propaganda machine. I chuckle every time I hear liberals go off on Rush or Sarah for a couple of reasons: 1. They drive the already-crazy lefties even crazier and it’s so funny to watch liberal heads explode; and, 2. They have both learned how to use the media to their advantage. Case in point: All the flak (in the MSM) generated over Rush’s ‘phony soldiers’ remark about people falsely claiming to be war veterans which prompted a letter of (undeserved) rebuke from Sen. Harry Reid and signed by 41 other Democrat Senators. Rush turned Reid’s letter on its’ head by auctioning it off for charity, the letter eventually selling for over $2M, then matching that donation with his own money. It was a fantastic case of turning liberal lies, propaganda & Marxist political correctness into a powerful positive.

agreed. The point about stockholm syndrome is especially relevant.
Considering that the left is led by lawyers, sociologists, and professional politicians, and that almost everyone spends most of their youth in a government institution dominated by union members (public school), it’s a marvel that conservatives can win any election.

There is an outlier,one that appears to deviate markedly from other members of the sample in which it occurs,who is poised to take the front runner position. Herman Cain! Here are the reasons which are hard to refute if you really think about it:

1. He is outside the UNTRUSTWORTHY political world
2. He is the ONLY candidate that puts forth solutions to the problems (Really listen to the others…big words, blame Obama, no substantive solutions)
3. He has held the highest positive intensity score since entering the election process. This means that once people find out who he is they LOVE him! Right now half of the voting electorate know who he is and it is increasing every day.
4. When the Left ultimately has nothing left to win but their RACE card, which they will play, they are praying to have any candidate other than Herman Cain to debate. Since he has no ugly secrets (and that drives them crazy) they employ the junior high tactic of pretending he is invisible.
5. Herman Cain is smart, and he is beholden to NO special interest. He runs a ground game like a skilled general. He operates in the black, careful calculates where and when to spend resources so that a 5th place finish in the Iowa straw poll after spending 0 on advertising and $100,000 total on the event, bus, hotel, food…was a positive return on the investment. The other top four candidates spent 2 million (each I’ve heard) and one is not even in the race anymore. So I guess Herman Cain really finished 4th! Great strategy!
6. Herman Cain believes in the duties of the office of President, promises to uphold the Constitution of America, is a good and Godly man without beating anyone of the head with his religion.
7. Herman Cain is the best debater in the room because he can deliver his solutions in a one minute time span without attacking anyone else in the process.
8. He understands that no man knows everything and it is foolish to think anyone does. He has spent his life surrounding himself with the right team to solve tough problems.
9. He is not running for office out of arrogance, ego, more vacation time, boredom…He is running for President because he realizes that the success of America is not about him…it is about our children and grandchildren!
10. He promises to give up golf on his first day in office!

So I could give you 100 reasons that Herman Cain is the ideal candidate for President of the United States of America, but these 10 should be good for today!

Republicans need to unbunch their panties and TAKE THE FIGHT TO THE DEMS.
Gingrich has his way when he turns around a stupid media question and says “no more gotcha.” Republicans MUST go on the offensive about Socialism in the Democrat’s programs. No mercy. No prisoners.

The problem is, with the mass media, for the most part, on the side of the democrats, even if the Republicans do manage to make a decent argument against the left’s emotional attacks, that argument gets almost no air play, it gets no attention, very few voters, who might actually change their mind, see that argument because the networks never air it, or even talk about it and the newspapers always seem to skip around it.

Then there’s the question of how is a Republican, politician or not, supposed to respond to the left’s emotional tactics? They say Ryan wants to push Granny off a cliff. What is the appropriate response? “That’s not what he said!” If you try and give them logic and numbers again, even if you manage to persuade them you’re not going to push Granny off a cliff, they just come up with another and another and another.

Something the author never thought to mention was How do we fight this plan? If someone could come up with that idea, they could be the next Karl Rove.

You ask, “They say Ryan wants to push Granny off a cliff. What is the appropriate response?”

Kyle-Anne Shiver is spot on. The answer is – you fight fire with fire. Very little money would be needed to produce an in-your-face rebuttal to the Granny video. You create your own video with Uncle Sam, all dressed up in his red, white and blue regalia, being pushed off the cliff by an Obama look-alike. And in his hands, you have Uncle Sam holding a box with one word on it – jobs. Visuals against visuals. Emotion against emotion. All going viral.

Ms. Shiver is right, until 80% of the Americans who are either conservative or mainstream moderates grow a pair of them and start fighting back… we will be manipulated, outsmarted and ruled by the 20% leftist minority.

And we and our loved ones will continue to suffer. And rightfully so.
Cheers.

We don’t get beat in the media-sound bite-ad campaign wars 2 to 1 we get beat 50 to 1. It is a miracle that conservatives do as well as they do.

Where are the creative conservative ‘Mad Men’? The left can’t have them all. Or are we so righteous that we think it wouldn’t be fair to use their tactics against them. Screw fair, the leftists are the royalty of one or two or three Aulinsky words that say all THEY want to say (I know this as I hear them from liberal automaton friends constantly i.e., ‘racist’, ‘homophob’, ‘greedy’, ‘child-hater’ ‘Climate denier turd’( I thought the last one was particularly interesting, something Physicist would probably use). And they constantly capture their view in very simplistic 30 second ads and a photo op (hate signs at Tea Party events set their by liberals), albeit twisting the truth to fit their ends.

I’m with Jefferson. I don’t go looking for libs to dust it up with, but I don’t back away and that usually startles the hell out of them. However, if they start the shouting routine, which some do, the conversation ends immediately as I won’t get in a yelling match. If that is the best they can do to make a point I don’t need to be in the discussion.

No, a crying American Indian! With some litter on his moccasin. And Obama’s pushing his canoe over Niagara Falls.

Nah, it wouldn’t work. Conservatives hate Indians and anyone else who’s different – everybody knows that. And where we gonna find an Obama look-alike willing to portray the Saviour doing anything naughty? He’d be black and he’d be an actor. Figure it out.

Wouldn’t a privately funded, 30min video montage detailing all the glaringly obvious lies, misrepresentations, deviant associations, rabble rousings and downright anti-American subterfuge Obama and his truly vile operatives have subjected us to, be a useful political weapon? Repubs and conservatives need to take off the gloves and start hammering the breadbasket!!

The only people who care about Obama’s performance are those who keep talking about it: the conservative strategy of harping on the failures of the Obama administration is the political equivalent of preaching to the converted and a waste of breath.

To get elected, the conservative message needs to be stronger than the hopey/changey blather we hear from the Democrats and focused on real, live issues that paint a better future, not an analysis of the past. AND it needs to be aimed at the ‘undecided’ voter in whose hands the next election outcome rests.

But somehow I have my doubts that the conservatives can interrupt throwing the other guy’s toys out the sand-box long enough to be anything other than out-maneuvered and weak-kneed collaborators in their own diminution.

I’ve said for years that republicans are just too damned nice for their own good – thats why they get their collective asses handed to them all too often when they should have – and could have – won an election. Case in point – McCain – Dole – etc. Need I say more?

Lets make it a parade of people rolling off the cliff. Start with Uncle Sam – I like that one and its what I thought of when I saw that ad – then senior citizens – men and women clad in job specific clothing to get the point across about jobs being lost – military men & women – then to students in graduation garb – then children – broke as paupers of course and dressed to make that point. I think it would really make a point.

What republican would approve of such an ad? That I don’t know – but thats who I want to nominate to run against Obama – they could win in a landslide and take the senate with them.

Better yet: Counter with a video showing how leftists are REALLY shoving granny off the cliff–back it with facts–historical facts and statistics, as the author suggests–then finish with the conservative response: fiscal responsibility, economic security, lower health care costs, American-style freedom, and a true charitable attitude toward care of the vulnerable. In other words, show them who’s the real hero in the room. Then if they vote for the other guy, shame on ‘em!

What the right REALLY needs to do is learn to employ humor better – embrace it. The left’s dominance of propaganda owes largely to its use of humor by Hollywood, stand up comedians, John Stewart (many leftists actually confuse his show with real news), etc. The left has been winning the culture wars by using ‘product placement’ (product in this case being leftist dogma) in nearly every sitcom that’s rolled out of Hollywood in the last 40 years.

Remember that time when Bush used the word “Strategery” in a debate with Al Gore? Oh yeah, that’s right, he didn’t…that was a Saturday Night Live sketch. If you own the humor, you own the message. Reagan practically won the 1980 election on a simple joke when he deflected Carter’s barb about his age into a indictment on Carter’s “youth and inexperience.” Brilliant.

How many people benefit from the making-money vision of Bill Gates? how many built a new program, started new bussiness, got facilitating things out of windows, word, excel, etc etc? And, therefore, how many lifes were actually SAVED, how many JOBS created, how many people left the poverty after Gates?

How many people left the poverty as a consequence of Mother Teresa’s charitable works and altruistic life? My bet is ZERO.

The thing to remember is that you have already lost if you accept the underlying premises of their arguments. You win when you force them to justify their own premises, which is generally impossible without them coming off as the nutcases they generally are.

In every example you give conservatives are on the defensive. Perhaps we should go on the offensive.
My God we have a soft target, we should be hammering away at it. I dont mean mentioning or pointing out, I mean HAMMERING. Ignore their attacks and challenge them on every point.
Why arent conservatives hammering away at Obama’s miserable failure at managing the economy.
During every conversation ‘fast and furious’, the black panther affair, and extra-legal actions by Obama bureaucrats should be thrown in their face. Why is the illegal war in Libya no longer a topic of conversation? Why does he get a pass on letting our military be volunteered by others?
Hammer, hammer, hammer……..

When was the last time I openly discussed conservative views? I am fortunate enough to live in a relatively sane part of the country where I can do so daily. Here it is the nutty left views that are treated as such.
As Marc Malone says in #1, I easily destroy leftists. When they start I simply ignore their attacks and respond with ” How much is your electric bill? Just wait until the EPA gets through with you, you wont be able to afford to eat. ” , or something along those lines. As soon you point out how much money leftist bs is costing them, they shut up.
Hammer, hammer , hammer………

Mention the travesty known as “operation fast and furious” to a liberal, let alone a non-political type, and I assure you that they will have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. Point out that it has to do with guns and the liberal will will dismiss you as a NRA crackpot. Their response will be something like “where did you hear that crazy story….on Fox News or something?” This followed by the usual liberal eyeball roll and sneer.

A point to be added to my previous comment. Liberals quite effectively play the “willful ignorance” game. The believe that they are much better informed than you so it follows that if they don’t know what you are talking about then you probably don’t either. So they paint you into the corner of trying to explain your position. And as expressed in another article on this site “When you’re spending your time explaining, you’re losing, as the old saying goes”. It’s a great tactic and it is employed often. Usually accompanied with that annoying condescending grin as you try to explain.

Without trying I beat one of “those” guys. He and the desk lady in my condo were talking about the “racist AZ law.” I said I supported it. The “guy” immediately ponced and said, “You must be one of those ditto-head who who watch Glen Beck on Fox news.” I said, “Who? I don’t watch tv. I read the Heritage Foundation, American Thinker and Victor David Hanson……He stopped, blinked once, turned about and walked out of the building.

I am not sure it is pretend ignorance. For example if they only read the NY TIMES (“All the News We See Fit to Print”) they will miss many stories that “We” do not want readers to know about. To say nothing about what does and does not get mentioned on TV…..

Oh too true. The reason leftists listen to NPR, watch Stewart and Colbert, and read the NYT is because those outlets do not report anything that would puncture the crappy little narrative into which they’ve bought.

Bias of omission.

“It can’t be true, otherwise I’d have heard it on NPR!” This is an attempt to avoid the hard work of reassessing their worldview, and an attempt to maintain plausible deniability.

NPR didn’t report on the racially motivated murder of Channon Christian. Did not report on Gunwalker except to say that it was a reason to push for more gun control. Did not mention in their “hard hitting” report on the Gibson raids that Martin contributed to Democrats and is union anywhere in the story and has done no followup. Other commenters could probably identify many more glaring lapses of hjournalism or simple non-reporting.

Being confronted with all the unreported facts about these issues, the frightened, narrowminded pseudointellectuals of NPR’s audience would likely respond, “Well I didn’t hear what your telling me on NPR, so you must not be telling the truth”. The bias of omission is crucial to the connection between NPR or Stewart or Colbert or MSNBC or the NYT and these audiences because these outlets allow the audience to exist in a bubble where uncomfortable facts are never presented, so the cherished ideology can remain fluffily unchallenged.

Of course facts which disprove the philosophy and narrative are “faux”, to use their childish epithet for FOX news. Why, if it wasn’t reported on NPR, it simply CAN’T be true. These outlets know that their audiences tune in or listen or read so that they can tie into an information stream which has had excised from it any information bits that will challenge them. It’s a symbiosis – a taxpayer funded one in the case of NPR.

Meanwhile, the reverse never happens with conservatives, because such a preponderance of the media and entertainment industries are left of center that we are all immersed in a culture where we are exposed to leftist attacks on conservatives in a way which impossible to avoid.

Suthenboy;
The person that has done the most FOR race relations in America is white.
Abraham Lincoln.
The book “With Malice Toward None” is an excellent example of what a REPUBLICAN has done specifically for the black people of America. And Lincoln worked at it for all his adult life.

MLK did contribute to their freedoms, but, not as much as Lincoln. The “Race Industry” of today is only feeding off the gullible and willfully ignorant.

I’m doing my part to get history set back to the reality it is. Not an easy chore with the brainwashed masses we have inhabiting the press rooms and internet “news” sites.

Good propaganda relies on, can be pretty much defined as, suppressing the truth by supplanting it with lies. Conservatives will never, ever be as good at this as the socialists. Those who buy into the propaganda largely do so because they do not want to know the truth. If they did, they would already be conservatives.

These five familiar 20th century conservative fundamentals (and more) are gone, and they are never coming back. In the coming decades, brands of conservatism that deny these changes will not survive. Conservative ideals may prosper … if (and only if) conservatism rejects denialism.

Conclusion America’s Republican Party keeps loosing the propaganda war, not because of liberalism, but because of denialism.

1) The global warming hoax unravels before anyone with eyes to see even as you speak.
2) Government interference in the banking industry put the economy where it is today. How is Obama’s barrage of regulation working for you?
3) Talk to your union masters about that.
4) As long as you remain the mindless lackeys of the environmental nut lobby preventing responsible exploitation of the resources under our feet don’t complain. Also, see 1).
5) We will have to try that sometime before we know whether it is still possible or not.

Gee….you prove the dude’s point. You might want to check out the 3 year study just concluded measuring the atmosphere from pole to pole for man-made gases. The idea that man “could” alter the climate is hardly a hoax. What is at issue is how the earth mitigates the man-made changes and whether other mechanism for climate change are more important over time.

If you want to take issue, inform the poster that a Thorium based nuclear industry would not be so dangerous nor would carbon based fuel made clean by advanced technology.

You could argue that not applying overwhelming or disproportionate force emboldens our enemies.

There are many points to take issue with besides reverting to the very mindset the poster has valid claims against.

You have to give up the man-made kick. It’s crap. I didn’t say it wasn’t warming (I don’t think it is – drought, doesn’t equal warming) I just if it is it’s from the sun and there’s you or I can do about it.

One day the sun will burn this planet to a crisp. Do you think using a differnt light bulb will stop it?

Wow, another Al Gore clone. Quick, run around in circles and cry about the level of the oceans rising 25 feet in the next couple decades! Or look at the Medieval warming period in which the average temperature was several degrees warmer than now for more than a century (you know, the amount that AGW is supposed to cause in the next century or so. Greenland supported farming and livestock and was not a land of permafrost and the lever of the oceans was not noticeably higher than today.

Now that that is out of the way let me just say that few people don’t believe in global warming. The world was been warming steadily since the last Ice Age with the occasional blip like the Medieval Warming period and the Little Ice Age. Oddly enough the warming and cooling all occurred without the benefit of industrial civilization therefore GW not AGW.

First of all, you must separate the “Anthropogenic” from “Global Warming”. It is possible that the climate is getting warmer, due to a variety of causes. Whether this is a long-term trend is yet to be determined; historically we’re overdue for the start of the next glaciation cycle. Human CO2 and methane definitely have some effect on the level of greenhouse gases; however this level is so minuscule as to be insignificant – less than 1%. If the climate was as unstable as the AGW proponents claim, whereby human CO2 contributions could send us into a Venusian state, any volcano should have done so years ago.

Secondly, however, the clearing of ice in the Arctic is not necessarily due to warming of that region. Rather it is due to shifts in the currents in the region that bring in warmer waters. Why these currents are shifting is another question entirely.

Imperialists look for any excuse to extend their reach. The Chinese are just buying in the same way a venture capitalist does on an emerging technology. There’s a chance it may pay off in the future and it allows them to see if the others at the table have a ‘tell’ as to what they will do under similar circumstances elsewhere. The Soviets used to do the same thing.

Nothing frightens me quite as much as a man who is absolutely certain he’s right. That applies to all of us, including me.

If half of mankind believes the science is right and the other half believes the science is wrong and the OTHER other half believes the science doesn’t really exist, then my conclusion is that mankind, collectively, hasn’t got the vaguest idea what’s really going on.

The fact is, nobody knows what’s really going on. And nobody’s really in charge. That means AGW and all those rational schemes to mitigate AGW are a) bollocks and b) never going to happen.

I think conservatives get hammered because, for some reason, they don’t take the battle to the liberals on TV. For some reason they’re afraid to offend the women on “The View” or other talk show hosts, let alone the people in Hollywood. Look, those people are not going to vote for conservatives anyway, so why pander to them and try to lick their high heels? Take the battle TO them. Make THEM the object of your scorn. Make THEM have to defend their positions and make THEM have to explain why liberals are supporting a form of government that has never worked anywhere in this world without bankrupting the countries that have tried it. That was Sarah Palin’s big mistake in the 2008 election.

McCain allowed the media to set the table that Palin was a fool and they did NOT fight back hard enough against the main stream media once the attacks started coming in. Saturday Night Live probably had more to do with destroying Palin as a candidate than Obama or Biden ever did. And when the McCain campaign didn’t fight back hard enough against this, the lies hardened into the truth in the minds of the American public. And we all saw what happened after that.

Don’t belittle the power of the main stream media, especially with young people and individuals who pay very little attention to politics. They get most of their news from people like Jon Stewart and David Letterman, so they really are not to be trifled with. But if you had a conservative candidate that was sharp and could respond an attack with another cutting attack, it may just show that they have backbone and can take the fight to them. It could work.

When a liberal impugns me for my opinion, I ask him/her if he thinks diversity is a good thing. Of course, liberals have to say that diversity is a good good good good thing. Then I ask them if that includes diversity of opinion. Stops them in their tracks.

“The overt feminization of the Democratic Party over the past 40 years has resulted in a politics dominated by emotionalism. The emotional tactics used by modern Democrats in the political arena have been developed by women over millennia in the battle between the sexes.”

And THIS is why the Democrats work so hard to destroy Republican women – because it threatens them at their very root.

The one person who destroys the liberals at their own game and her name is Sarah Palin. She was the first to equate Obamacare with “Death Panels”. In fact, she was correct. When the bureaucrat tells you that you are too old and won’t get more healthcare, you do indeed get a death sentence.

Then there is Sarah’s bus tour. She simply would not allow the marxist media to play their usual game. She refused to give the media her schedule. They were left jumping into a car and trying to follow along. Then they decried her tactics as dangerous because they had to speed along to keep up. The image is priceless.

As a physician, I recently encountered an abusive patient who used me as a lightning rod for all her ills.

With smoking-induced emphysema and related heart disease, she is a frequent visitor to the hospital.

During her rant “all you greedy doctors care about is money…I’m not paying you this time unless the treatment is successful”…I calmly interrupted her by pointing out that, as a Medicaid patient, she will not even receive a bill. Her treatment is free…on-the-house.

It was like pulling a pin on a grenade: “You Republican! Get away from me…I want another doctor!!”

Unbelievable. The ultimate insult in her consumptive, parasitic mind: “Republican”.

I don’t doubt this story is true, and there are probably thousands more out there just like it. I don’t give a rip if someone wants to smoke, eat double cheeseburgers & super-sized fries every day, be a couch potato, & not wear a motorcycle helmet – I will always come down on the side of freedom. But if you live like that, don’t expect me to pay your doctor/hospital bill (even though I already am) and then to top it all off, complain about the “free” (not to me) services you are being provided by the taxpayers! But for understanding the liberal mentality, this would be maddening.

There are a couple of clues that suggest this woman is a flaming liberal. First, she said “all you greedy doctors . . . .” It’s obvious to me she has bought into the class warfare tactics (envy) used by liberals and is resentful of your success, while totally ignoring all the years of study and sacrifice to make top grades, undergo the med school admissions process, then the grueling hours & study of med school itself, and last but not least, the cost of all of that. Secondly, she said “I’m not paying you this time unless the treatment is successful.” As noted in this article, liberals are the least charitable, and lie, cheat & steal more than conservatives, so her statement that she wouldn’t be paying fits the mold of a liberal, Medicaid notwithstanding. But even more telling is the fact that her previous treatments were obviously successful, even if she didn’t think so; otherwise, she wouldn’t still be alive to make such an asinine statement!

Aany doctor who is a Democrat must be outta their minds. Trial lawyers (you know, the ones who sue doctors) are Democrats!

Wow, I definitely can’t wait for ObamaCare to come into play! Imagine the look on her face when she comes in for treatment and you calmly tell her, “I’m sorry, but you have violated too many rules regarding healthcare. I can’t do anything for you.”

OH man! I’m laughing hard imagining that! If you wanted to really nail her coffin shut, you could always add in “Your historic President Obama said so.”

Ahahahaha! Lefties who will die through their own sheer ignorance! Brilliant!

I have found that when I challenge them as to where they got their “facts” and then cite direct sources rather than CNN and MSNBC they tend to want to change the topic away from politics as fast as possible.

Just like that female reporter who snidely asked the congressman if he was an economics major. While she was totally unprepaired for his, “Yes – with honors,” response, she didn’t even skip a beat by changing the subject.

What is the problem? If the unemployment rate hasn’t convinced you that things aren’t working, and the deficit doesn’t bother you, then no words of mine could possibly affect you. If you want more of the same, keep electing the same. The public is noticing. Reality keeps teaching until the lesson is learned.

You can expect some racist plant with fake Tea Party ties to do something between now and the election, because that’s all they’ve got. I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that Obama is going to do far more poorly than any care to admit. Were I a minority voter, I’d be balancing pride in the first African-American president, and a 46 percent unemployment rate among young males. I know how I’d vote, and I probably wouldn’t be talking about it to my friends.

“Ask yourself: when was the last time you freely discussed any conservative view with friends at work, or on campus, or in public — without hedging your every word?”

Here’s my answer: I don’t hedge a damned thing.

I’m one of the admins for 1389 Blog, a conservative blog that focuses primarily (but not exclusively) on counterjihad issues. There’s no pussyfooting around on the blog – we don’t pull any punches, and we consider it our mission to tell the truth in plain terms when other people won’t. We expose and condemn the attempts of the left to define the terms of the discussion and to distort the language with terms such as “human rights” or “Islamophobia”.

I have only one face. When I talk to people in person, they’ll hear the same message from me that they hear on the blog. It helps that the blog has given me a lot of practice in how to state the issues clearly so that other people will understand.

Nixon was born in 1913; Kennedy, in 1917; a difference of merely four years in age. Both had served in WWII.

Nixon is perhaps thought of as “old and gnarly” because he lived to a ripe old age, whereas Kennedy was cut down as a young man—but Nixon and Kennedy were contemporaries. Nixon when a young man was also not unhandsome, if not at glowy-sparkly as JFK was; his scowling lower and five-o’clock shadow was, in 1960, largely a perception created by hostile political cartoonists. The real difference was a class difference; Nixon was the earnest, striving lower-middle-class grind and Kennedy the wealthy golden boy.

He was neither. Please prove your slander rather than just throwing monkey-poop and hoping it sticks. Nixon never stood on the steps on a schools to deny black children an education, nor did he ever order firehoses turned on black people.

Nixon was the only president that we have ever had that when the Jews in Israel were under real threat sent them IMMEDIATE aid. His reward was OPEC and an oil embargo.

His only mistake was trying to protect his “friends,” when THEY screwed up. It’s not for nothing that we now have the term, “it’s not the crime – it’s the coverup,” in our lexicon. Make no mistake – there was only a Woodward and Bernstein because Nixon was a republican. Had he been a democrat NOTHING would have been “exposed.” In fact, I believe that we only have a “good” war (WWII) because Hitler attacked Stalin and Roosevelt was a democrat.

I should make it clear that I’m also not a big fan. He was an establishment (Rockafeller) republican who believed in big government. He established the EPA and took us off the gold standard, which may have seemed like a good idea at the time – but wasn’t in the long run.

Anyway, in doing a little reading just now, it seems he ENFORCED desegregation in the south – so there goes that whole racist canard.

Afraid I can’t recall the source, but when Clinton was in office I’d heard a comparison between him and Nixon that stuck with me. Roughly, “They were both corrupt. The difference was that Nixon used his power to protect his friends and Clinton used his friends to protect his power.”

Nixon and all the members of Congress who voted in favor of them should all have been impeached (or shot in a revolution) for wage and price controls imposed in 1971. The US government has no Constitutional power to set wages and prices in inter or intrastate commerce. The Constitution’s commerce power allows no such thing. Never did. Does not now.

Interestingly, those who listened to the debate on radio thought Nixon handed the lightweight Kennedy his head. It was the TV audience that gave Kennedy his debater reputation, and it couldn’t be because the women thought JFK was cute, could it?

“Winning these fights requires shaming the emotional blackmailers for their underhanded, deceptive tactics.”

That’s one of the things the libs have been so successful at in the last 40 years. Breaking down the foundation of civil societies. In the old days if someone was reprehensible people around him/her wouldn’t tolerate the behavior and would shun these people into compliance. They were an example of what NOT to do nad people would think twice about their actions.

The libs have been attacking our culture for well over 100 years, but starting gaining a foothold in the 60′s. From disrespecting elders (indeed, ALL authority figures), moral promiscuity, to basic civil discourse (code of public conduct), these people can not, will not, and absolutely REFUSE to be shamed.

“Did the teaching of creationism prior to 1925 hurt the American student? Funny but many of those same students fought and won WWII.”

Are you really suggesting that the science that enabled the West to defeat Hitler supported creationism? Are you even aware that a gay scientist broke the German code? Did the creator of the theories that led to a nuclear bomb support creationism? Is the excellence of our medical industry based on “Intelligent Design” or the intelligence of reason? As I said, some conservatives share similar irrationality with Islamists. Now be honest, deep down inside, wouldn’t you like to see more Christen-based law?

“When did it become and where in the Constituition does it ask the government to regulate American industry like communism and fascism does?”

You make the characterization that regulation of water and air, or even the interstate activities of corporations are regulated like Hitler or Stalin. Try spelling Consitution properly and let’s also add absurd responses to the list of what the GOP ought not to do in debating Independents.

“So raising taxes is the panacea for what ails our economy? I’d like to see you explain this.”

Yes, you will convince Americans that subsidies and loopholes that send jobs and manufacturing overseas and capital into Swiss Bank accounts. How patriotic of you. It is clear that the main thrust of the GOP plan to improve our economy is to suspend regulation and cut taxes. That is almost as effective in fixing our economy as it would be helpful to landing a man on Mars. capitalism is based on third party verification and free markets. The present mess is in part caused by a lack of both. The warning light should have gone off when accounting firms ran over the criminal cliff.

“No manufacturing will NOT return to America because of regulation, taxation, unionization and litigation. But the left has wanted and still seeks to destroy America’s industrial base.”

Romney says it all the time much to the dismay of his handlers. What we see here is the lack of seriousness in addressing the problems the GOP will have with Independents and frankly, the majority of people. I understand why the inclination is just to run against Obama, but that was horrible when the Democrats simply ran against Bush, yes?

hint: co-op the rational arguments the Democrats use and incorporate them into a more comprehensiveness plan. Don’t be afraid that some things the Dems say makes sense and appeal to most Americans. Take those ideas and put them into your broader solution which in fact addresses your valid concerns.

Unfortunately, creationism, collective bargaining is evil, regulation is fascism, and anyone Left of you drinks kool aid won’t win you any elections let alone govern once you do……

Lolly, perhaps you haven’t read any history. Nixon’s racist outbursts are now public record. Eisenhower sent in troops. Nixon sent Kissinger to Iraq in 1975 where he told their leadership that while the US would support Israel’s existence, he predicted Israel would become another Lebanon that Arabs should not fear. Nixon resigned because of his criminal activities and let me add another thing Republicans should not do while campaigning: Elevate Nixon. And yes, by today’s standard JFK would never win the Democratic nomination. Now that is something the GOP should say over and over to stress the direction Obama has taken Liberalism. The Clintons were called racists, not by the GOP but by supporters of Obama.

Darwin himself said he believed in the prime mover. So did that pre-Christian Aristotle. You have twisted what I said to suit your own spin. It is one thing to believe in God, it is another to espouse the unerring and literal interpretation of religious text written centuries ago.

Since God commanded the Jews into battle, why would He have left out triage from Deuteronomy? Or even boiling water to treat wounds? I guess God didn’t think that very important. No matter what you say, the many men and women who fought and created the hardware to beat Hitler and then Stalin did not wait for God’s intervention. They used their heads and their science and our founders believed reason, not sectarian interpretations of religious doctrine was the foundation of informed public debate. Again, the material destroyed Hitler, not the immaterial hand of God. You should read what Einstein and his friends thought about God beating a full house with a pair of deuces…..

Your inability to see beyond your inclinations is another non-adaptive behavior on the part of Republicans. I see they have toned it down on gay rights. They have also played down the abortion fight. Ron Paul’s national numbers don’t look good and he’s for gutting most of the government and ending foreign aid.

While there are more conservatives than Liberals, doesn’t mean Social conservatives or those more Right Wing. I suggest Pew for the most recent polling….

I don’t need your revisionism. I was actually alive when this took place. Please stop your propaganda and silliness. It really does show you to be uninformed. No one is perfect, least of all Nixon, but rants don’t equal action and you are a fool to think otherwise.

So HE gave us free will to either pick the right choice or be damned for eternity in hell. Some choice…lol

And when Judgment Day comes, all life outside of earth, all the stars and planets end, because this was all a cosmic theater so humans on earth could make the right decision and join God in immaterial Heaven…

You are “free” to think for yourself, but imposing that belief on the many is really no different than Islamists wanting Sharia.

I’m not trying to “win” a debate with you, just showing the difficulty of taking that line with convincing Independents.

@maxtrue – You can’t “impose” a belief on someone. It is impossible.
Please quit equating islam with Christianity. It’s so false it doesn’t even compute. Now, liberalism, on the other hand (and yes – you are a leftist liberal regardless of your registration) jives pretty nicely with islam. Both are attacking Christianity and the values of the west.

Those are the ally’s YOU have chosen. You are in bed with them. Enjoy the flies.

Maxtrue- learn Christian eschatology before you criticize it. Christians do not believe that we will live forever in an immaterial heaven, but rather in the physical New Jerusalem with real bodies that have flesh and bone. Christ did not ascend into Heaven as a spirit, but rather in His resurrected body. When He comes, He will give us new bodies that are like His- glorious, immortal and capable of eating normal food.

A major problem with attempts to teach creationism/ID and/or religion motivated/based criticism of evolution in science classes is that it is essentially an effort to promote sectarian religious proselytizing.

The anti-evolution crowd insists the Theory of Evolution is equivalent to atheism. Roughly half of the country has no problem with the Theory of Evolution. Somewhere between 70-80% of them, at least, are self-described Christians, not atheists, and they do not automatically equate evolution with atheism. Polling shows only about 2-4% of the population is atheist or agnostic.

Those promoting creationism are engaged in a sectarian conflict with those Christians who accept evolution.

Conservatives and Republicans who attack evolution, promote creationism, and who want creationism/ID and religion based criticism of evolution taught in public schools are engaged in an effort to force public schools to engage in a form of religious proselytizing, in science classes

The many tens of millions of Christians whose religious beliefs encompass and accept evolution see these people as attempting to force public schools to teach their children religious beliefs they do not hold. Polling shows this drives Independents away, and that is no surprise.

So long as Conservatives are wedded to this anti-science Creationism (an idea rejected by the *Christian* scientists who first formulated evolutionary theory), we’ll be a dying breed. When Conservatives who accept free-market Capitalism can’t see that a free and uncontrolled biological system, based not on central planning or authority, but on contingent needs of organisms in their environment at any point in time, leads inevitably to diversity and resilience of life, then we’ve sunk to the same level as the Left, who accept evolutionary theory while rejecting that an economic system without central planning or authority, based on the contingent needs and wants of the marketplace at any point in time, inevitably leads to diversity and resilience of commerce. This would be a lance through the heart of Leftist economic theory, if we were smart enough to see it.

re #3: There are two things to keep in mind when deciding on a tax rate. Higher tax rates on an activity discourage people from engaging in that activity. (This is why some states levy high taxes on cigarettes, even though the poor are disproportionately affected). At some point, raising taxes on businesses and individuals decreases revenue as more and more people decide it’s too expensive to engage in that activity (like California) and decide either to go elsewhere (like Texas) or just go out of business (like with the luxury yacht tax that forced rich people to hold on to their used yachts a few more years but led to unemployment for many many blue collar yacht builders).

If a government wants to maximize revenue, it tries to find a rate that maximizes revenue. If a government wants to dissuade its citizens from engaging in an activity (like, say “small business”, it must recognize that revenues will go down because people won’t engage in that activity.

Gun control is so unpopular that even the Democrats passed pro-gun laws when in power. Polls show not only that close to 80% think RKBA is an individual right, over half of adults identify themselves as supporters of the NRA!

Why should I take seriously someone in a fringe weirdo coward minority?

The resulting peculiar brand of ideology-first denialism / stuck-in-the-20th-century conservatism has precisely zero chance of prospering in the 21st century.

So if you want to know the single biggest reason why “Republicans keep loosing the propaganda war”, you and your fellow PJM/Tatler editors and columnists need only look in the mirror. Because your own ideology-first denialism is the problem.

And if you want to *fix* the problem, then the path forward for American conservatism is simple: abandon ideology-first denialism.

Sorry, but you’re wrong. You’re thinking like a typical liberal: the only answer is to do something. Pass more legislation, raise taxes, start another program, add more bales of straw to an already overburdened camel.

This is why the majority of even Republicans annoy us TEA party members, they counter the plans of the left with better plans. In reality, the best plan is: nothing. I recently read the biography “Coolidge” by Robert Sobel. While one might argue with much that Coolidge did, his tactic for fighting the recession in the 1920′s was simple: studiously and deliberately do nothing. Remove the obstacles that stand in the way of businesses and let them recover on their own. With regards to business (outside of its Constitutionally mandated jobs of defense and border security) the government exists basically to lay down basic rules and serve as a referee.

Do you really want to fix the health system, increase jobs, and help the minority workers? Than do nothing. Actually, given the current state of things there are few things to do: Remove regulations, especially those in the EPA and the NLRB, the minimum wage laws, and Sorbane/Oxley. Get out of the way of the thousands of small banks that service small businesses in small towns. Remove the regulations that inhibit their functioning; they are not the same as large investment banks and must not be treated as such. Enforce the borders and keep out illegal immigrants so that our unemployed have jobs to go to.

Remember that businesses are in business to make money, not to employ people, not to make goods and services, but to make money. If they can’t make a profit and keep it then they will not hire more workers. In general, treat small business as the essential sector of the economy that it is.

We don’t need new programs. We don’t need thousands of pages of regulation. We don’t need redistribution of wealth to “even the playing field”. We need: nothing.

Paul of Alexandria, if all of the following were conveniently true, the Tea Party’s “do nothing” policy would make sense: (1) AGW is a conspiracy, not a fact; (2) ordinary citizens can participate fairly in unregulated (computer-controlled) markets, (3) America’s economy is isolated from the global economy (4) a nuclear/carbon energy economy can be simple, cheap, and safe, (5) a simple military strategy of “killing our way to victory” suffices to win wars.

Since none of them are true, the Tea Party’s “do nothing” policy is a train-wreck for conservatism and for America.

You, apparantly, can’t read. Try the part about getting the over-regulations out of the way of businesses. Try explaining why artificially halting all energy exploration in this country (but give billions of dollars to other countries to do the exact same thing) helps Americans.

This country has one of the largest Thorium deposits in the world. Since you were alive decades ago, maybe you remember the excitement in 1954 over the prospect of Thorium nuclear power. do you favor a world shipping uranium around the global a smart idea? We could make much safer nuclear power that doesn’t require coolant or make bomb material.

We have a lot of gas that ought to be extracted carefully as Israelis scientists are trying to do with former US energy CEOs. Coal and oil do require smart regulation and technology to keep it clean, but you are right that America and Canada possess all the energy we need until solar and hydrogen become affordable. Did you know that airline exhaust actually helps lower the mean temperature over the US? Almost ten years ago to the day, the stoppage of flights following 9/11 cause the mean temp to rise, thus proving the exhaust had a cooling effect.

The mess in the Med regarding Turkey and Israel is really over energy as Cyprus and Israel are ready to start drilling. The potential gas and oil is quite large. Noble is there and I rather doubt that Turkey will instigate a shooting war in the Cyrus-Israeli shipping lane with the US, England and Russia assisting the extraction of the energy needed for economic revival….

Republicans were losing the “propaganda war” long before anyone heard of global warming, and when a majority of American voters doubted a purely materialistic explanation of life through natural selection (as polls show they still do).

“It’s the economy, stupid”–and Republicans’ seeming indifference to the plight of the poor and disabled and elderly and chronically ill, that has been used by Dems against the GOP since FDR. FDR never said a word about Darwin nor did he know about global warming. But he sure knew how to appeal to the economically disadvantaged. The GOP never has. I’m not sure it cares to.

All of the above notwithstanding, vilification of conservatives and conservative ideas has been a very effective tool of the left. We would have many more electable candidates if so many weren’t dissuaded from entering politics by the outrageous invective and name calling by the left. By their nature, conservatives are not comfortable with those tactics and will not employ them in their own service. I don’t quarrel with that reluctance, but it is a powerful handicap and can be overcome only by the most attractive candidates like Ronnie Reagan.

The reason why conservatives often end up losing the propaganda war, is because we don’t emphasize that we are caring, loving, optimistic, forward-looking *people*–perhaps more than our liberal opponents are. And that we care about the least fortunate among us–liberals have no monopoly on that.

I have heard self-described conservatives say such things as:

1. Either work for a living or starve.

2. Hospital Emergency Rooms should deny care to illegal aliens.

3. If poor people worked harder, they wouldn’t be poor.

The world, and even American society, can be an unfair place. Life can be terribly unfair–despite one’s best efforts, he can still be down on his luck due to illness or accident or an economic downturn manufactured many miles away in Washington DC.

And when it comes to the least fortunate among our fellow Americans, we shouldn’t emulate Cain and say “I am not my brother’s keeper.” That’s not a Christian attitude. And so conservatism ends up appearing un-Christian, callous, indifferent, and unfeeling of other people’s suffering.

We need a better answer than “What happens to other human beings is not my problem.” Especially when those other human beings are Americans. There should be a place in conservatism for the concept of a shared human community, in which we help each other through tough times. In the past, that role was often filled by the church. Today it’s harder because of the mobility of our society.

We should explain our methods. We believe that private charity and the marketplace–properly incentivized–can do a better job of uplifting all of us (including the poor) than Washington bureaucrats. But too many of us don’t say that. We act like we want to get Washington bureaucrats off OUR backs–while ignoring what happens to those less fortunate Americans who have no other recourse right now.

In 1980, Ronald Reagan summed up his philosophy as “We will move ahead–but we won’t leave anyone behind.” Do we still believe that?

Conservatives don’t speak like that unless there is some gamechanger involved. We generally live by a “Teach a man to fish,” verus “Give a man a fish,” rule of thumb.

So saying, if a man does not fish (not unable – but refuses to fish, i.e. work) let him starve.

Don’t give medical care to illegals in emergency rooms? Damn straight – if they are there for a blasted nose bleed or diaper rash! If you mention something lifethreatening I will slap you for being silly.

As for the poor need to work more. That’s just dumb – i don’t believe ANYBODY has EVER said that. People may need to work smarter – but only liberals are lazy. Basically, we conservatives all know we are only one or two paychecks to homelessness and would never say anything so dumb. It’s more like, “By the Grace of God go I.”

These are tough love concepts. Cruel to be kind and all that. Charity starts with whether or not someone is deserving in the eyes of the giver. They are deserving if they are a) truly misfortunate, or b) repentant of their foolishness. Charity should be directed, not blanket.

The Left are children who can only think “Me!” and “Now!” They have no desire to create a system that continues or lasts in any manner. “Sex now! Then abort! Break up families! Monogamy stifles fun!” Where will that lead? How does a civilization like that survive? They don’t care. And don’t even get me started on arithmetic and the economy! They can’t see 5 minutes into the future. I don’t know if it’s immaturity, marajuana or a combination of the two.

The rest of us refuse to comprehend that others think that way. We think that because the Left shouts about the environment then they DO have a concept of the future (wrong though it may be); but their “green” agenda has nothing to do with the future. It’s all about caging and containing people who achieve too much.

Kyle-Anne, as you know…I am the President of your fan club, figuratively speaking.

This was among the best in a long line of wonderful works.

I hesitate to try to add anything for fear of smudging such fine art.

I’ll make a couple of comments because I can’t help myself. I have been “writing at the top of my lungs” for years about non-leftists being pummeled by the propaganda machine. It is a thread that is woven through the vast majority of comments, columns and essays I have written.

You hit on every theme, bat on the sweet spot, out of the park. Here are a couple of my humbly submitted additions.

1)Non-leftists are not only meek, they are improperly motivated. When a defense to an assault on this land of ours is called for, it is delivered as an apology rather than standing on its own merit. Leftists frame every issue and non-leftists try to fend them off.

2)Non-leftists would “like to” or “want to” get their points across. We have long since past the point of no return on that posture. We are at the “have to” landing station. And the train is leaving.

3)Leftists are at war with capitalism, Judeo-Christian belief systems, and national pride, protection and patriotism. Non-leftists do not recognize the declaration of war. It is December 6th and we are sitting around the Pearl Harbor Cafe sipping Tea.

4)Not only are the leftists at war, they have prepped the battlefields. They indoctrinate our children, confiscate our wealth, shut down our natural resources, cut off our supply lines, and seize our communications. EVERY mass communication medium is under their control.

5)The revolution has begun. And we slumber the night away. We keep opening their vault hoping to find some common ground, some common sense, some common decency. And, the other day we opened it and found Jimmy Hoffa.

He said openly that he wanted to take we SOB’s out. I think I’ll order a Loco Moco and some Hawaiian Punch.

Cfbleachers, having read this and a few of your other posts… I like the way you think. Maybe I should become the president of your fan club. Figuratively speaking, of course.

As much as I like and really enjoy good essays and clear thinking, nothing gets my skullduggery going more than “actionable intelligence”, such as, for example, this Shiver piece. And as much as I like good verbal conservative messages delivered with humor and a smile, think Ronaldus Maximus, nothing gets me going more than someone actually following through on them… no matter the difficulties, or the opposition.

Like so many here, I believe that the time for rolling over and playing dead by our leaders – AND by the rest of us – is over, way over. That’s why I initially liked Sarah the Barracuda, but am now much more hopeful with Texas Rick. Because the price of failure “at this late stage of unsustainable” is almost unthinkable. Human nature being what it is, I really believe that even most conservatives would have a difficult time wrapping their heads around the devastating consequences, both for our nation and for our futures, of another four years of the “annointed one”. Maybe even irreversible.

It is my prayer that between now and November, 2012, that the internet and the grass roots out there will literally come alive and explode with information, ideas, talking points, courses of action and all kinds of groups coming together… all to send that destructive far-left community organizer back to where he came from.

Lots of good stuff in the article, but I never suppress my opinions in public. Throughout school and at work I make it clear that I’m a libertarian anarchist, technoptimist, neo-traditionalist, high church Anglican, right-wing, Cypherpunk.

Hear, hear! I have no qualms talking openly about the fallacy of anything and everything Democratic / Left. When I was in the military speaking factual bad stuff about Obama nearly got me thrown in the brig quite a few times. But when I was able to provide the source and legitimacy to my superiors, most of the time I was let off with a “warning” while the other person walked away with a piece of important news.

If todays conservatives want to have more influence in the propaganda war then I suggest they start focusing more on the doughnut and not the hole.

There’s no doubt that the long gestation of liberal ideology is bearing disastrous results for our country. I can’t think of one segment of our country, cultural, economic, academic or otherwise, that hasn’t been negatively impacted by liberal policies. Yes, as conservatives we need to call attention to these results on our country,…and we do. This is not enough though.

If the hole is the emptiness of liberalism and the problems its wrought on us then the doughnut is what we, as citizens, have at our disposal. We have in this country amazing wealth of natural resources. We have millions of educated and competent people. We have a technological infrastructure second to none. We also still have (for the most part,) our freedom.

How we leverage thess assets going forward should be a bigger part of the conservative platform. A common sense cogent path that’s easily understood. I truly believe most americans aren’t aware of just how much this country has to work with. Unfortunately, no matter how abundent in resources, poor leadership often results in crisis, division and malaise.

Conservatives have the ability to define a cogent path forward that can benefit all americans. Donald Trump, while not my choice for president, does a great job defining our idiotic trade policies. While the MSM focuses on their distaste of the “Donald”, conservatives should be illuminating the results of an improved trade policy. This one issue alone can have an enormous positive impact on jobs.

The one blessing we have from Obama is an abundance of crisis to cherry pick. We need to hammer just as hard on the positive aspects, in detail, of the changes we want to make as much as we are on the negative results of his policies. I feel americans need to be reminded that we are far from sunk and our ship, with the right charts, can easily find fair seas.

If we as conservatives, give americans a “fast forward” snapshot of just how great we can be and how we get there, then the national agenda will change accordingly.

All this arguing will get us nowhere. Liberals cannot abide reason, period. They are an example of Dorothy Parker’s use of the word, ‘horticulture’.
Plain facts will have to manifest themselves in unmistakable fashion. Here are a couple for our contemplation. In some states and counties and towns, paved roads are being allowed to revert to gravel or are having the asphalt removed so they might be returned to gravel. Continued paving can no longer be afforded by the aforesaid governments, which are broke. California may wind up closing some 70 state parks because the state can no longer afford to maintain them. California law now prohibits the sale of these parks to raise money for the politicians to fritter away. I expect that the law will be changed to permit the sale of these parks. Who will purchase them? Super-Rich from Asia? At least one state has sold some of its government buildings. The state now rents the buildings they sold. They will wind up paying more in rent than whatever they gained by selling. This sort of thing will accelerate in time. They are facts that cannot be denied or glossed over. Face the facts, folks.

You asked the liberals to abide reason. Well here is a reason-based idea: Do you suppose that all the tax breaks that liberal Obama extended may have something to do with no money being around to pay for those roads and parks? It’s a simple concept: We can’t cut taxes and then gripe when there is no longer enough tax money to support amenities that have traditionally been supported by taxes.

You want to defeat liberalism? I’ve never lost an argument with a liberal yet, and they invariably leave chewing nails and speaking in tongues when I am through with them. Three fundamental principles to defeat liberals, progressives, whatever the latest game of semantics.

(1) Be armed with the facts and educate yourself in political affairs, both domestic and foreign, history, and sciences. Memorize the facts when necessary and meditate on them, so you’re prepared for a Lib’s boilerplated questions and responses. You answer one Lib charge, you answer them all because Libs are a pack of barking seals armed with today’s Journolist talking points. Logic, reason, morality, facts, results, beauty, truth are all on your side as a Conservative. You have no excuse for losing an argument with a Lib because their reasoning feckless, trivial and invariably wrong.

(2) Quit worrying about being liked or respected by Liberals. Develop a sense of humor, and learn to laugh at liberals, always reminding them of their many failures, replete with varied and colorful examples. You can’t miss with an Obama retort.

(3) It pains me to have to say this, but most Conservatives are pretty lame in a debate and we have to clean up our own back yard first. Let the RNC know, it isn’t selecting the candidate for us this time, and if they don’t get out of the way, we will dispose of them too. It’s our nature to try and play nice and many of you get frustrated by these fools – meek is one thing; cowardice is quite another. There are millions of Conservatives who are too timid to get involved.

We have to learn to start taking the fight to these monumental liars, propagandists, hacks and shills – especially the networks, the newspapers, and Hollywood. This weak counter punching bunk, trying to appear to remain above the fray is defeatist in nature. Let unelectable politicians do that.

You remember when George Bush was elected and most of Hollywood called him uneducated and stupid, loudly and often? Well, some smart Conservative got wise and developed a list of the Hollywood elect’s academy achievement. Roger Simon is not typical of Hollywood. Published it for the world to read. I didn’t hear Cher calling George Bush stupid after that.

We could discuss whether the Constitution says a “person” is a fetus and thus covered by a “person’s rights” (not that I think there is no rational criteria for when a fetus becomes a person -something that Roe v Wade implied in their term “able to survive outside the womb”)

Is the earth older than the Bible says it is and did Eve come from Adam’s rib?

Unless corporations are allowed to pay US workers as cheaply as they pay the Chinese, why would they come back even after a tax break?

Are the interests of shareholders more important than the economic and national security interests of Americans at large? Or should US corporations still help the Iranian nuclear program if their shareholders say so?

Shall we let corporations determine what clean water and air mean?

Can I buy a fully armed ballistic missile and launcher for my backyard and pour extra fuel in the wet lands at the edge of my property line?

The GOP however has taken great pains to make sure the Party keeps from center.

Anybody that thinks that’s a winning strategy is not only woefully misguided but the easiest target of all “Maxtrue” McCain… and Neo Darwinian, abortion on demand, godless types? You think you’re unique in the blogosphere in argument? You’re the most fun of all to mock.

Give me about 30 minutes on an unfettered board, you won’t be chewing your nails – you will be cussing me.

Let me know where to go so we don’t clutter the board this fine board and we can make it more “personal” Max.

So “Tex” you think you would “beat” me with irrational arguments? Of course, you could be abusive but that would hardly cause me to bite my nails. Creationism? Show me a single verifiable bit of evidence that shows God’s hand directing the development of life on earth. Hell, the Intelligent Design crowd couldn’t imagine a single experiment their “science” could employ to test their belief.

And for such a great debater you have already tripped over your own shoelaces. I am not a person who supports abortion on demand. My morality is based on the morality of life and scientific fact as to when a fetus has the characteristics of a “person”. To imply region defines “morality” as though that word didn’t exist before Jesus, is not a great starting position to rational debate.

It seems your big thrill is mockery yet you know little about me. I am hardly very unique on the internet, but apparently, you are less so. You “seem” the type that needs a private chat room to deliver unfounded and personal attacks as though that can replace debate using facts or reason. Since I don’t know you, I have only your comments to work with.

Loly, I never said babies were property. Again, you seem not to understanding what I wrote. Did you mean a fetus in the first trimester was the property of the mother? Abortion occurred in the colonial times. There is nothing in the Constitution that says a fetus is a person. All the rights described regard persons, (though not for women, blacks and Indians). I guess they were property of sorts.

P.S. Don’t worry “Tex”, we’ll have more opportunity to exchange views but any victory will not come through intimidation or personal attacks, something conservatives should avoid. I knew this conversation would ruin my lunch hour….so don’t fret that work calls.

To imply region defines “morality” as though that word didn’t exist before Jesus, is not a great starting position to rational debate.

Well, you’ll have to take that up with Jesus about his ‘region.’ I’m just the messenger boy, and that is not what first chapter of the Book of John says – like there from the beginning. Theology, certainly not Christian theology, doesn’t seem to be your bag, so we are probably wise to stay with subjects you are capable of debating with some measure of effectiveness. Is it science that is your claim to fame? Is that where we will start?

And for such a great debater you have already tripped over your own shoelaces. I am not a person who supports abortion on demand. My morality is based on the morality of life and scientific fact as to when a fetus has the characteristics of a “person”.

You read like a first year student of Kant. There ought to be a law against taking one philosophy class. But ‘Max’, undoubtedly you’re the only person on earth with knowledge of the “scientific fact” (cough cough) as to when a fetus has the characteristic(s) of “person.” Why don’t you fill the rest of the board in with your proof, if you would ‘Max’?

Show me a single verifiable bit of evidence that shows God’s hand directing the development of life on earth.

zzzzz….Now there is a unique question I’ve never been asked before. So you want me to give the blind man sight, hey? This will be a quid pro quo type of discussion, right ‘Max’? After all, you being the scientist are responsible for some explanation, are you not? So let’s move to a board, not moderated, where we can move a little quicker. Direct me ‘Max’.

I did find it in the constitution for babies. That would be the part about an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit (not guarantee) of happiness. Just because they are pre-born doesn’t make them non-people.

Show me in the constitution (and I don’t give a DAMN if abortion was done in colonial days. Murder has been done since Cain and Able. How DARE you try to justify it!) where a woman has a RIGHT to murder. Go on, quote it.

The problem with today’s liberalism is that it is increasingly illiberal.

hint: this allows Republicans to co-opt liberal values and make the Democrats seem Leftists. The GOP focuses on only the later because they are afraid to admit even with Lincoln’s history, that they have “liberal values” which include the praise of the Bill of Rights, that all are equal before the law, that as Madison said, government’s highest goal is to increase the prosperity and happiness of the “people”, etc. etc. Many Libertarians understand this. Not sure most conservatives do. Just listen to JFK’s speech as he was sworn in. That was once a liberal speech. The GOP however has taken great pains to make sure the Party keeps from center. They have indeed moved Right of Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Bush senior and Reagan.

Silly, man! Liberals USED to be people like Washington, Jefferson and Adams. Conservatives were people who liked the status quo of fixed classes, slavery and serfdom. It was silly the marxists (liars all) who decided after the civil war to start co-opting and changing the language. Now, leftists are liberals and people who believe in personal liberty are now conservatives. Shoot – libs even stole the blue color from us becuase they knew they were too commie for the red to sit well with people.

The real problem as I see it, having traveled 5400 miles this summer from NYC to Wyoming and back, I can state with authority, even as a life NRA member and a registered Conservative in NYS, the the more Republican a state is, the earlier the bars close, the harsher the rules are against having fun, sexually, and what you smoke, etc.

In other words, the Republicans need to embrace Libertarianism to get young voters. In NYS, anyplace a man can go shirtless a woman can. Not so in the Plains states and the West. Tits are illegal! Leaving out the outright fascism of Bloombugger and his ilk, overall, states run by Democrats are more fun, other than in terms of shooting stuff. And I SHOOT all the time!

Putting all else aside, we, the Conservatives/GOP are perceived as and are boring! Come on! I hate liberal bullshit but when it comes to parties and food, Dem towns win! I hate NYC, but I cannot eat anywhere else.

My prescription: I take liberals shooting! You’d be surprised how many change their minds about guns!

This article comes at such an incredible point in time for our family. I have been spending the last few days thinking about how to proceed with respect to friends and socializing. We have decided to keep like minded company and keep the socializing to a minimum. It’s gotten that bad. What I’m hearing at the cocktail party scene is appalling.

We have recently met a couple with four children who are immigrants from a former communist country, they are aware of the battle being fought and with them we can speak as freely as I can here.
Just recently after the Norway shootings and all the fury over Mark Steyn, Dalrymple, Melanie Phillips and the right wing blogosphere being the cause, I drove by and yelled good morning my fellow right wing terrorist neighbors. It’s that comfortable, and knowing there are just a few people I can talk to is great.
So therefore rather than get really discouraged everytime I am invited to a party or gathering and put myself through talk like ‘conservatives are troglodytes, I’ll stay home. My husband comes home and cannot believe the narratives that have been planted in peoples heads. Why suffer for days afterwards.
I love David Mamet’s account of his journey to sanity, you look at all these people in company and you realize, no, they have no clue who Thomas Sowell , Hayek, VDH, etc.. are ,so how can they think otherwise.
But slowly Canada is undergoing a seismic shift. We just broke the leftist stranglehold on the media with the Sun News Network. People who think like us are being exposed to interviews with Stanley Kurtz, Steyn, Coulter, and great open minded Canadian thinkers like Kathy Shaidle.

All this tells me that in time those people at the social events who decided to stay mum will out themselves now that they realize they are not alone. Until then I’ll stay home and invite those with an open mind.

Just keep fighting the good fight. Pick your battles; win the war. We are winning, you know.

Sure, academia, Hollywood, and the media have tilted the playing field way to the left, and the liberals in your daily life have been blaring their message into the social sphere nonstop for decades now. It’s been rough going, but it’s getting better.

I believe we are seeing the collapse of New Left liberalism. Its contradictions and failed expectations are becoming obvious — likewise the desperation of its supporters.

I live in a deep blue area and I can see that my friends and neighbors have become less certain of their answers. They have also discovered that they cannot steamroller me with their cant.

Watch the young. With their normal idealism they were entranced by Obama and liberalism. But they are learning the hard way that they will bear the burdens of those policies more than any other group. They are going to turn hard against New Left liberalism. Which doesn’t mean that they will become Republicans, but there will be an opportunity to reach them and we need to be ready for that.

McCain, may be the classic problem. He wants to reach out and cross the aisle, but seems more willing to attack his own party, than to do the battle with his opponents.

And nobody, in the tea party, wants a leader that is giving away the store and not willing to fight for their side. And with the new media, making the “lame” stream media less powerful, what is needed is principled conservatives, constitutionalist, and being ready to do what Trump does so well, not put up with the whinny crap that liberals toss out, expecting the republican candidate to cower.

McCain was so upset that somebody used Obama’s middle name, but where is he now that a labor leader has called to take out the son of bitches. Where is Obama, on this issue that if it were a conservative would be tarred and feathered.

Sorry, you don’t fight fire by cowering in the corner. You do what Trump does. And amazing how he got a birth certificate produced in record time.

“Ask yourself: when was the last time you freely discussed any conservative or even moderate political view with friends at work, or on campus, or in public, or at a large social gathering — without hedging your every word? When? Can you identify a single recent instance when you felt your conservative or even moderate views would be tolerated without provoking name-calling or public shaming into the nearest corner of societal oblivion?”

Ya gotta be kidding me. How can you possibly debate a liberal? It’s like trying to hold onto a piece of Jell-o slathered in motor oil. They have no clue as to what they are talking about factually. It’s all emotion, assumptions and feelings.

And when you point out facts (such as Clinton bombed Iraq over WMD and regime change or the top 10% of income earners pay 50% of all taxes, etc.) they either say “you’re lying” or change the subject.

Seriously. Most of the libs I met don’t even know the basics of the US government or even current events.

My advice: don’t waste your time debating them. Just move on with your life and defeat them at the ballot box.

I agree with you concerning liberal “knowledge”. However, we cannot simply hope to beat them at the ballot box. There are two levels of liberals; those who are simply illogical and effectively just a drain to society, and those who “claim” their illogical stupidity just to be the leader of the village.

Look at Eric Holder. He’s an insanely liberal (or leftist) person. He is very, very illogical. But look at -ALL- the damage one village idiot caused.

Rather than blow by the lefties and simply vote, we need to determine who can be saved from their clutches. Not all leftists are hardcore and immovable in their beliefs. I have met and reformed several in my own travels without doing anything beyond reciting knowledge I had that countered theirs.

If you can get a lefty to THINK for any amount of time you have a chance to show them the error of their ways.

Although this is not directly relevant, I’d like to point out that even before the Civil War, even in the slave states, being Black did not automatically made you a slave. Free Black people had rights.

I will not allow Democrats to label Republicans as the party of racism when it is obvious to everyone except Dems that the Democratic Party is the Real Party of Racism. To prove it, ask any Democrat to name Even One! Black Representative who was elected from a solidly Democrat Congressional District with a White majority.
They can’t. There aren’t any.
No white Dem will elect a Black Congress(wo)man as their Representative.
Democrat districts need to be bizarrely gerrymandered making Black district majorities to get any Black Representative in office.

However N.B., of the 2 Black Republican Reps now in office, (West-FL22, Scott-SC1)it’s important to note that BOTH Congressmen were elected from districts with White majorities!

So when faced with the accusation of Republicans being racist, I always ask: “Now you tell me which Party is more deserving of the title as the Party of Racism”?

Okay, this is why liberals (and the media) don’t take us seriously when discussing politics. That is because, like Auzerais here, so many of us are in the habit of just spouting off whatever comes to mind (facts be damned) that we think will help us prove our point (apparently we figure that if we WISH it were true . . . why, it must be true).

Auzerais here is boasting about how she stymies all of her lib friends by claiming that Dems have NO black members of Congress from majority white districts. Horsefeathers. Five minutes of research has identified the following black members of Congress as being from districts with majority white populations:

The above list obviously trumps the two (two!) examples Auzerais smugly gives her friends from the Republican side.

Really, folks, with the Internet, we now have the luxury of having facts at our fingertips, so there is no excuse for just randomly claiming things that we hope will bolster our argument (while never bothering to research our claims). That’s a big downfall for our party. It’s how Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann always get in trouble. And it’s one of the reasons that the libs best us in political debates.

As for Auzerais’s attempts to use Dem voting records to prove they’re racist, good grief, Congressional seats aside, it’s a ridiculous argument to make. Coming right out of the chutes the most obvious low-hanging fruit for the libs is Barack Obama. That is, it’s a bit clownish to claim that white Dems won’t vote for black candidates when they just voted a black man into the highest office in the land.

With the thorough dissecting and thorough scrutiny the Republican candidates get from the Democrat/Socialist media, why would anyone vote Democrat?

We still don’t know what grades Obama received on his “academic achievements”, but we get details of what Palin’s mother went through in the delivery room, when she gave birth to Sarah.

And how could anyone like Obama ever get a security clearance? If I would have entered any information on my military entrance paperwork like the activities and companions that Obama had, I would have immediately processed for discharge. The military would not have put up with me at all.

“We still don’t know what grades Obama received on his ‘academic achievements’, but we get details of what Palin’s mother went through in the delivery room, when she gave birth to Sarah.”

Hmmm. This is mostly the fault of the Palins themselves as they’ve pimped out details of their personal lives to every public outlet available — from starring in their own reality shows, to writing extremely personal memoirs, to such absurdities as entering a TV dance competition known for a side show of competitors who throughout the years have included rappers, Jerry Springer, various sexpots from the Bachelor and Bachelorette shows, the drug-addled Ozzy Osbourne’s daughter, a Jersey Shore castmember, an ex-Playboy Playmate, a WWE wrestler, a transgender activist, and a castmember from Jackass, among others.

Really, if Bristol had no problem in her “My Life So Far” memoir taking us along for the ride on the night she lost her virginity, is it any wonder that we also know about what Palin’s mother went through in the delivery room? Delivery room details pale in comparison to what the Palins themselves have told us about seemingly every other aspect of their lives.

Indie;
BUT, without the media’s incessant scrutiny and vilification, they could not have had the success with those examples you illustrate.
Looks to me that the attacks meant to marginalize and defeat, were used as a launching pad to fame and fortune.
Another American success story.

Well, I do definitely agree, Cyber. And that is one of the reasons I am no fan of Miss Sarah’s. My uber-uber liberal friends use her to beat me to death. It is obvious to so many people that she is just riding the fame train as far as it will take her and her family. She really has demonstrated little interest in or commitment to actually accomplishing anything in politics or aspiring to political greatness (if so, she would not have quit her job as governor and she would not have so eagerly had her family do all of the things I’ve listed above for $$$).

Sarah is smart, and she clearly knows that she can take her family a lot further financially by doing all of the above than she can by pursuing (and sticking with) a real political position. So she uses politics as her “reality show schtick” the same way that pregnant teenage girls use their unfortunate situation as their “schtick” to become “famous” on those shows like “16 and Pregnant,” the same way that those obnoxious kids from NJ use drunken behavior, promiscuousness, and ill manners as their “schtick” to become “famous” on that Jersey Shore show. That’s all reality TV is now — voyeuristic entertainment — and Sarah and her family have courted every voyeur in existince. For a price of course.

And that is how my lib friends kill me. They laugh and laugh and laugh about how she is making such a chump of conservatives who actually believe she is a politician (not merely another reality show entertainer). My friends say they love her because, as libs, how could they not love somebody who is so successful at sucking endless dollars from the pockets of unsuspecting conservatives. Their logic is that every dollar Sarah sucks from us, it’s one less dollar that the conservatives can spend on conservative matters of actual substance.

But you’re too frightened of females to do it. Expecting people who run away from the full obligations of citizenship (e.g. draft registration) to understand they can’t partake of the full privileges of said citizenship (voting) would be a good start; but you’d spook the girls and girlie-men. They’d start saying bad things about you. And you can’t handle that.

Wow, again, you sound extremely certain that you know the inner workings and complete thoughts of a person you’ve never met. P’raps you fancy yourself to be a divine entity, like maybe you think you’re God? Or maybe you’re just spookily clairvoyant — i.e., palm or crystal ball reading heretic?

At any rate, I don’t have a big enough ego to assume I know exactly what another person “is frightened of,” but I do have a big enough sense of humor to say that I believe that Boogeyman was using sarcasm. Spoofing. Cracking irony. Etc.

The issue begs a religious answer. The left’s patron Saint, Saul Alinsky, seriously dedicated his book to Satan whos and uses the same technique as the libs.
Satan is known as the accusor and I know of no liberal who doesn’t avoid the truth by accusing (personal attack)those who bring the truth to counter their deceit.
What, exactly, do we think the left’s creation of political correctness is, if it isn’t the development of a force shield against truth around their evil?

The truth is that it only works because of our pride. Ask yourself if you ever didn’t say the truth because you feared what others would think of you.(Didn’t John McCain run his failed campaiugn with that fear as the default- don’t criticize Obama.) You see, it is pride, which the Godless know is the source of all sin. (How about envy, immorality? This is the soul of the Godless left and many on the right)
The more we throw God out of the public square,the more we see that the other side sees God and social issues as their enemy -not the economy.They can take tht down by destroying our character and morality.
Read the Communist party plan to overtake America and you will see they view the social issues and moral issues as the fabric of our strength.

They know that well. It is we that don’t.

Yes,fiscal cons and libertarian types think that their taking our money is the real wrong. Wait until they finish with taking our freedom, our dignity, our lives, destroying what’s left of our family structure, because the only protection we have is the rights our forefathers placed into the constitution as coming not from the state -but from nature’s God.
The next social battle you ignore, just remember the communists don’t think it’s minor.

Want to have fun with liberals? Simple, be an asshole. I can’t think of one democratic politician that doesn’t qualify for that orifice: reciprocate. Play the game on their terms. For example, when your liberal brother in law MD claims conservatives, and by implication most of us, are racists for wanting current immigration laws enforced and the border locked down (controlled), simply respond by proposing the annexation of Mexico and Canada as the fifty first and fifty second American states. His response is always no way Jose! But surely, the Canucks and the Hispanics deserve universal rights, like enjoying the second amendment and the first amendment in Hermosilio and Montreal; after all, they’re always beating feet to the US to get rich being great comedians or gardeners, and they don’t even have to be legal to enjoy the right to free speech and packing a gun or getting treated for gun shot wounds at the local hospital, and for free! Extend the social compact! And with more doctors from Mexico and Canada and open cross border drug market commingling, maybe the market price for doctor’s and prescription pills would go down? Have you seen the prices of cocaine going up lately? Grass? No, of course not. On the other hand, the cost of maids for the professional classes–doctors, lawyers, and engineers– would go up if Maria and Carmelita and family were citizens from the fifty first state, because they could no longer be exploited out of their social security by liberal lawyers looking for a free ride. It sucks being middle class. My brother in law the doctor hates lawyers but likes cheap maids and Canadian comedians, usually from the left. Of course, his offspring are all daughters; so in the interest of equal opertunity and gender equality, I heartily advocate equal dying for equal pay between guys and gals in the military, which inevitably pisses him off; mainly because it requires and affirmative action draft of his daughters to get the females up to speed. I like to think of it as Title Nine extended to National Security and universal Selective Service. Why should the daughters of Pelosi, the Trumps, and the Huffingtons and, oh, Obama, get a free ride?

It all boils down to this, folks…ask them if they are willing to work hard to give most of what they have earned to someone who won’t work? If they say yes, then tell them they are idiots who could not even comprehend a rational political discussion.

Fairly good points, except the “godless evolution” crack. Know why lefties point at conservatives and sneer about how we believe bugnutty stuff like creationism? Because we hand them the ammo! We really, really have to make a change.

Divorce religion from politics. Be a conservative, in favor of limited government, the rule of law, low taxes, etc. Also be a Christian or whatever. But keep them separate! It is no longer possible for a reasonable person to deny evolution. That argument is over, except in the heads of ideologues. If you want to believe in creationism, fine. But DON’T CONFLATE IT WITH BEING A CONSERVATIVE. You believe in creationism because that’s your religion, and that is the ONLY reason. Meanwhile, in scientifically-grounded reality, evolution explains EVERYTHING about speciation. It’s the only theory there is, AND THERE ARE NO COMPETING THEORIES. (Don’t even bring up “Intelligent Design”. That’s just creationism in drag. It is NOT science.)

Every time a Republican defends creationism, or uses words like “Darwinism”, it makes us look stupid. Cut it out. Stick to the politics, where we ARE the party of reason.

(The Left also believes in an equally bugnutty theory. It’s called Keynesian Economics. Hammer them on it.)

The idiocy of this comment is mind numbing. So call yourself a Christian if you want? Don’t act like or speak like it, or even dare think like it. Just privatize it.

It is no longer possible for a reasonable person to deny evolution.

You know. Somehow I was able to make it into medical school, achieve ‘A”s in all the hard sciences including your pet evolution, never used the word ‘Creationist’ except to mention one of the many pejoratives called, and still come away thinking the entire argument of evolution explaining it all has little to do with science and everything about denial of the most obvious.

I have no more in common with you than the world’s most inane lib – but you certainly do – the garden variety religious bigot.

I love your assertion that divorcing religion from politics is idiotic. I’m sure the framers of the constitution must be drooling morons in your book. Do you have any logical argument to back up that claim?

Nothing in modern biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. I don’t doubt that one could make it through med school without believing it, but you’d have to at least understand it or you’d be a scary bad doctor.

If you have a scientific hypothesis that explains speciation better than evolution, let’s hear it. You’ll make all the papers, and be a hero at any scientific convention.

As for the straw man – I never suggested not thinking like a Christian if that’s what you are. I’m just saying that you a) need to separate that from your politics (because being a Christian is NOT a prerequisite for being a conservative), and b) stop acting like the earth is flat. Seriously. We’re at the point where doubting evolution is just as lame-brained as claiming the earth is flat. The data are in. The science is overwhelming and one-sided. Many converging lines of evidence support it, and NONE refute it. Believe in any god you want to, but if you choose to believe in a god who claims the earth is flat don’t expect anybody to take you seriously.

Republicans are correctly perceived as being slavishly devoted to the business interests that are looting our economy. The looters have decided that our society is not worth saving, and are trying to extract every last dime before the US implodes. The Democrats have mostly sold out also, since corporate $$ are needed to stay in Congress.

I know quite a number of Republicans who understand the difference between a free market and a business-friendly market. Most businessmen hate competition, and many would love to do away with the free market. Not my cup of tea.

Republicans who back drug prohibition ARE racists. And I’m a Republican. Of the libertarian sort. In the next year the Ds will be running this line and the Republicans will do their best to make it stick. Or how about this one my oh so constitutionalist friends.

I never noticed a Prohibition Amendment. Except for Alcohol.

As a friend of mine says: Prohibition is a Progressive Program. Why do so many Republicans support it? You got me.

You forgot the biggest reason Republicans lose: because they refuse to use violence against the Demoncowards. The Demoncowards instruct their draft-dodging vermin to attack the weakest Republicans: old people, single women, people in wheelchairs. Republicans need to kill Demoncowards when they go on the attack.

Arm yourselves and be ready, nay, eager for war with these subhuman trash.

This is why we should buy more guns and more ammos, fellow conservatives. The end is near, we need to prepare. Argumentation is for sissies, I’m with John Wayne and Chuck Norris, they never argue, they just kick ass. I’m for physical action, not talking.

‘Paul Ryan, the Republican, sees the coming debt train wreck and uses logic to draw up a real plan and publicly goes to bat for it. In response, the liberal group, Agenda Project, ran ads showing a Paul Ryan lookalike pushing granny over a cliff in a wheelchair.’

And it will likely work.

There are two fundamental errors in your analysis, which for the most part is valid. One is that the problem Republicans and Democrats are in opposition to each other. It’s true that they compete to win elections, but to say that they oppose each other is misleading. Both parties are dominated by a single group, like running against like, they disagree on the details but share the same social backgrounds, the same social assumptions, at heart they’re similar. They’ll talk a good game (sometimes), but look at what they _do_, not what they say.

Both parties favor free trade, unlimited open borders immigration, both are basically social-liberal, both are internationalist (albeit in different flavors), both are elitist, both have client constituencies who they favor at the expense of the general public, both are secularist, ets.

That’s not to say that every Democrat and every Republican is the same, but the establishment in each party is fundamentally on the same wavelength, and out of tune with the general public. Not everything the shared establishment believes in is automatically bad (though much of it is), but the ruling class is very definitely on a different frequency than the rest of us. Michael Barone, speaking of religion, once described America as a nation of Indians, governed by a ruling class of Swedes. That’s true of more than just formal faith.

The other problem is that the conservatives are themselves out of synch with the general public on some things. For ex, they keep trying to frame the national debate as ‘socialism vs. the free market’, or ‘socialism vs. liberatarianism’, and that misses the point. They want to lump the New Deal and the Great Society together as one thing, though Reagan (for ex) warned against doing just that.

The general public, for the most part, has held fairly consistant attitudes on many things for decades, as you note. Among them is that they like having the Federal Government as primary guarantor of old age benefits. Conservatives lost several debates with FDR over things like unemployment insurance (in principle), Social Security, etc. The public supported FDR hugely in election after election, and have shown no sign of changing their minds on those points in the decades since.

Yet they rejected nationalized health care at the time, FDR dared not even try it, and it was rejected again in 1993-94 and Obama and Co. had to use sleazy parliamnentary tricks and unprecedented amounts of pork to finally ram it through even though they held near-supermajorities, and it remains a very unpopular action.

The public can hate Obamacare and still support Medicare. They can support unemployment insurance as a concept but think it needs to be more restricted and less open-ended. They can support the New Deal but not the Great Society, and that’s a common thing.

So one reason the GOP keeps getting caught up on this is that they keep trying, whenever they win the majority, to interpret their win as a mandate to roll back the New Deal. Every time they try it, it blows up in their faces and gives the Dems another chance to reiterate the ‘GOP hate you’ line to key voting demographics.

The first step to fixing any problem, as you note, is to face the reality of it. A reality conservatives loathe is that if you ask a random person to list the 3 greatest U.S. Presidents, you’ll get Washington, Lincoln, and FDR, almost like clockwork. Trying to run against FDR’s legacy in a nation that thinks like that is not smart politics, and Paul Ryan’s insistance on the GOP doing so has been a major tactical error. That budget vote is very likely to become a shackle around the legs of GOP candidates in 2012.

It’ll likely be a problem because the majority of Americans still see Social Security and Medicare as _good_ things. They’re deeply popular, and a lot of the voters see them as a fundamental part of what America is all about. Conservatives don’t have to agree and we don’t have to like that, but it’s a fact of life that we can’t afford to disregard. It’s been a fact of life since 1938. That’s enough time that by now, it ought to have sunk in that the electorate is still fond of FDR’s memory.

Luckily for the GOP, even with Paul Ryan shackled to us, we’re up against a Democratic Party and President who seem to be determined help us out with one unpopular move after another. But this election is a long way from a slam dunk, and the more the GOP is seen as being against the New Deal and Medicare, the more likely it is we’ll get a second term of Obama (may Heaven have mercy on us if we do!)

Curiously enough, here in Costa Rica I regularly discuss and debate politics from my perspective (which would best be characterised as very, very Hayekian Libertarian, i.e. spectacularly economically liberal but with a strong sense of the necessity of maintaining social order and the sanctity of the sovereign individual by the swift, merciless and immutable force of Law) with a heterogeneous mix of friends and colleagues without any animosity whatever. The only time I can recall in recent times when things got nasty was when a 9/11 Truther intruded on the conversation. The Dems, the Repubs and yours truly poured scorn on him until he backed down. I ended up shaking hands and buying him a drink. It was all very gentlemanly.

Serious article.The great photo of the offended dog!Republicans as the adults among the immature feminine and young liberals in the fast changing America.This paradigm raise the questions of upbringing,education and the peculiarity of adaptation to changes of the mature Republicans and childish democrats.I see the passivity of Republicans on both directions.

This article so hit the nail on the head! Harry Reid called Bush a loser amongst other names and every time a republican goes to criticize Obama they first begin with how much they like him personally. I was having discussion recently with a girl who has a crush on Obama, there is no other way to put it. I asked what was Obama’s greatest accomplishment to date. She said health care! I said, “oh, you didn’t have health care before?”. She said, “yes”. The conversation ended with her looking confused. The only time I get really angry is with my friend Craig who is African American. His wife had to step in at a wedding we recently attended. Craig is a smart family man, use to own his own business, hardworking. How he can still support Obama I’ll never understand.

Thank you so much for this brilliant piece. As you may or may not know, Ayn Rand had a lot to say on this very subject over fifty years ago – too much to post in this reply. I’ll give you a hint, though; She called the hero of Atlas Shrugged (John Galt) “The man without pain or fear or guilt”.

I had the privilege of serving with Amb. Jeane Kirkpatrick at the UN in the eighties where the US was constantly on the “loosing” side of so many (ok meaningless, but we still had to take them seriously) General Assembly Resolutions they filled a thick binder. Anyway our mantra was “loosing is winning” which meant that if you stood by principle and had maybe a few other countries who believed in similar principles join with you, it was ok and you could have a foundation to build on. And you know what, we managed to eventually get passed a resolution criticizing the Soviet Union for it’s occupation of Afghanistan, and a resolution criticizing Vietnam for it’s occupation of Cambodia. And we also (after Jeane had gone back to Georgetown) managed to get a resolution through the UN Human Rights Commission which castigated Cuba. Now all these resolutions didn’t amount to much or anything in the real world, at least not immediately, but a few years later much of the global facade of communism came crashing down because it had lost the cover of legitimacy (and also because, as far as the Soviets went, Ronald Reagan convinced them that we would “bury them” with our ability to outspend them on defense). My point is that while the liberals may seem to have their warped worldview accepted now, we should plod on, stick to our principles and build our coalition. We will prevail because the truth eventually shines through.

Meh. As someone who converted to conservatism in the early 90′s after I got out of college and had to work for a living, I think that the problem with the right is that it has absolutely no internal life — no introspection and no narrative that it can speak of. Reagan was the exception — which is a massive irony since the left still calls him an idiot — and our problem is that we know we ought to be like Reagan but we just can muster it. We’re not the same as he was. He’s our affable, successful father who was a success and had many friends, and we are his four-eyed wallflower children who can’t dance, can’t sing, and can’t strike up a conversation with people because we are either intimidated by them or just don’t get a charge out of interpersonal relationships.

I think the 5 points listed here are true as symptoms. They are not a diagnosis. We need more conservatives like Reagan and Rush Limbaugh — whose convictions are not just wind and pragmatic, but also deep, and who can express themselves as if they believed what they are saying.

In my own experience in arguing with liberals I’ve had a fair amount of success and I am never apologetic. The technique is not in the arguing style but in making sure that there is a clear point to the discussion and that point is how much left wing ideas are European ideas, who materially benefits by them and where the bait and switch happens. It is especially valuable when arguing over Obama who is in reality our first left wing white trash president (from his mother’s side). Minorities often are surprised to consider that once you accept left wing premises you accept that underneath it all is the supremacy of those of Central European background. It is no accident that Marxism has been most virulent in areas such as Russia, China, the Far East and Latin America. Marxists always felt that those people could not become true proletarians and therefore must be more forcibly molded. Universities are a European transplant and have those biases as well. Pointing out that socialism is the theory and liberalism is more like engineering also works. Engineers work on the practical side of things, physicists theory, but they are both out of the scientific tradition. A liberal may work in practical every day politics but if the political situation changes whose side is he on. I give hypotheticals to ask in a different situation who would so and so support. It is always eye-opening to see someone agree that in that situation we would be on the same side and the person he/she is supporting would be the opposition. It is a lot easier to come up with those situations than you may think. Left wing group-think lets you know in advance what the “true” leftist position would be.

Here’s another five hundred billion reasons why Republicans are losing the propaganda war.

$500 billion dollars is the amount of money that Exxon and Russia have agreed to invest (over the long haul) in Kara Sea drilling. As the folks on RealClimate put it

The Unnoticed Melt

One requirement for the success of Exxon/Russia deal: a further retreat of Arctic sea ice. Given that climate model simulations indeed all project such further retreat of Arctic sea ice, it seems that at least to some degree, managers of big oil companies have started to make business decisions based on climate-model simulations.

That may be good news. Or not.

One of PJM/Tatler editor Charlie Martin’s favorite engineering journals, IEEE Spectrum, has an article on what it all means. Gee … who wouldda thunk it … Exxon now’s a loyal-to-Russia company … corporations sure do flip-flop loyalties, don’t they?

Deals like Russia/Exxon, which depend utterly upon the accelerating reality of AGW, are why insistence upon ideologically pure AGW denialism is among the five biggest reasons that Republican Party candidates (except for Huntsman) look like a pack of morons.

The 2011 Arctic melt has smashed all records … and the melt is not over yet. Here’s the (hilariously clumsy) Google translation of today’s German press release:

Arctic sea ice extent small as never before

Physicists of the University of Bremen now confirm the apprehension existing since July 2011 that the ice melt in the Arctic could further proceed and even exceed the previous historic minimum of 2007. It seems to be clear that this is a further consequence of the man-made global warming with global consequences. The sea ice retreat can no more be explained with the natural variability from one year to the next, caused e.g. by weather influence.

Yeah, the scientists know AGW is real and accelerating … the business community knows it … the military knows it … the Catholic Church knows it … farmers know it … and pretty much every American hunting-fishing-conservation group knows it.

The only folks who *don’t* know that AGW is real are the Republican candidates for President (Huntsman excepted). That’s why these candidates look like a bunch of morons and/or politics-first panderers.

John Cooper, you ask a good question, and the answer is “partly yes and partly no”. Yes because soot on the ice absorbs heat, no because sky-born aerosols shade the ice and thus retard melting. Moreover, also observed is rapidly accelerating melting of Arctic ice from the bottom, where soot is not a consideration at all.

There are about a dozen models out there, each of which takes these factors (and many more) into account, with varying weights and refinements. But the Arctic melting seen this year has outstripped every one of these models.

Data acquired in coming years will test what many climatologists are beginning to apprehend … that existing global climate models substantially underestimate the acceleration of AGW.

Not surprisingly, AGW religious fanatics (like A Physicist) simply ignore any data which doesn’t support their religious dogma, which is why they NEVER talk about antarctic sea ice coverage.

We only have 30 years of satellite data to look at, so no one really has a clue what’s normal, but since we started looking at it, arctic sea ice coverage has dropped a bit, while antarctic coverage has increased a smaller amount.

As for A Physicist’s claim that sea ice coverage “records” for the arctic have been “smashed”…total nonsense, it’s about the same this year (3 million km2) as it’s been the last few years at the summer minimum.

Are you really a Physicist? I ask because I don’t see any evidence of that based on the way you argue a point. You provide lots and lots of anecdotal examples of ice melting and so forth and then claim “people did it” or quote supposed authorities that “people did it.” Your supposed connection between CO2 and warming is the result of computer models, that is, your prove consists of referring to the computer hypothesis itself.

The fact that scientists world-wide are grappling with the problem of assigning a single number to the temperature of the atmosphere or that computer models require proof the same way any any other hypothesis does or the existence of other difficulties real scientists are dealing with does not blunt your certainty at all.

Perhaps your grant requests depend on scaring people. Or perhaps you are really just telling us that you should be in charge of all our lives, dictating how much carbon we are allowed to use, since you seem to regard everyone who disagrees with you as stupid.

Why don’t you just admit that you are not about science at all. You are all about control of other people’s lives. If your side wins, and your dictatorship of the environmentalist proletariat comes to pass, you and other intellectuals will be the first ones eliminated by your own allies, for the good of “the people” of course, as happened in the USSR, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, China, Cambodia, Cuba, and on and on and on.

I have some tied and true tactics. If a lefty yells I respond, asking if they get extra points for that. Then I warn them that I can do extra points, too. If they get physically testy, I tell them that is my briar patch if you want in on it. If they call names, I tell them those names really hit home back in seventh grade; is that all you got. If they go emotional, I actually bought a dozen Cryin’ Towels that I keep handy and I offer them one. If they rant, unmercifully, I throw one like a penalty flag and go Wah, Wah, Wah. I have called them Polly and offered a cracker for spouting lifeless liberal talking points. I have many more. They all work. Nowadays the fellas go no further than to derisively call me a Republican; a badge I wear with honor. Even that bothers them.
Republican politicians move in circles of etiquette where these things aren’t done. If you want to see fun, find an unapologetic Republican who belongs to a union, like me. Put him or her with a Democrat who doesn’t know it. Bring pills for the Democrat.

Since you wrote this article, KA, I can assume you are open to all ideas and suggestions on this topic.

The only thing I can say is that if we conservatives want to know why we’re perceived as being hateful and closed-minded, we need only look for examples in the majority of posts on this blog and, in fact, even in your own article.

You ask why conservatives can’t express even a moderate opinion without provoking name-calling or public shaming? And then you immediately cite some study whereby you, yourself, call them names – i.e., liberals are greedy, envious, lying, cheating thieves (to list all of your accusations). Other than being warmly satisfying and allowing us to pat ourselves on the backs, how does calling liberals a litany of names help us learn how to avoid having liberals call us a litany of names?

And then in the supporting blog posts, Jacobite calls liberals “perverts, criminals, wackos, and aliens to society.” RKae calls them “children.” Suthenboy calls them “the nutty left.” Tex Taylor calls them “a pack of barking seals.” Zamir calls them “village idiots.” Henry Butler also calls them “idiots.” And Ken calls them “demoncowards” and “subhuman trash.” All in support of an article that claims it’s the libs who are the name-callers. Do you see why our complaints can’t be taken seriously?

You also bemoan the fact that Republicans are widely connoted with tinges of racism, hate, selfishness, greed, war-mongering, and etc. And then, right on cue, we’ve got Lolly solidifying that connotation by writing “ihateliberals” and Rock this Town saying it’s funny to “watch liberal heads explode” and Betina urging that we “whip these bastards into oblivion” and RKV insisting that certain members of Congress should have been “shot in a revolution.”

Tex Taylor got so worked up that somebody dared to have a different opinion from him that he repeatedly challenged the other person to find another board so he could make the attacks “more personal” (in his words). And Lolly is so unable to discuss politics in a civil manner that anytime somebody expressed an opinion that was not lockstep with her own, she went ballistic, telling one “you are a fool” and “you are a leftist liberal” and telling another “I will slap you for being silly.” She even admitted to being so unable to hear others’ opinions that she stopped reading after the first point someone wrote.

Then 7.x veered completely off topic to slam the work of Mother Theresa, and Snorri and Don L veered crazily more off topic to (without apparent logic or reason) start defending slavery by pointing out that some blacks were actually free before the Civil War and that there were even blacks who owned slaves — Don L even implies perhaps some sort of conspiracy that “they” (the media?) never celebrated or made a big deal out of the fact that in Connecticut there were six (yes merely six!) blacks who owned slaves (wow, some news earthquake that should have been).

And these are just a few of the examples of the posts being made by people who feel oppressed because the rest of the world thinks conservatives are hateful, violent, name-calling racists.

If we want to know why the libs have the opinion of us that they do, we need to quit looking at their behavior for the explanation and start looking at our own. We need to quit crying and name-calling like the big babies that the libs are and start being the grown-ups in the equation.

Also – is it really that hard (or uncomfortable) for conservatives to debate our ultra liberal friends? You write that Republicans can’t express even moderate political views in social gatherings without hedging and mincing their words. Yet not one poster on here claims to feel that way. In every post on here, all have boasted of pulling no punches and handily pummeling their liberal friends to a pulp in any and all political discussions.

If we want to know why the libs have the opinion of us that they do, we need to quit looking at their behavior for the explanation and start looking at our own. We need to quit crying and name-calling like the big babies that the libs are and start being the grown-ups in the equation.

Actually I was being polite to the board, so that I didn’t have to deal with ‘Max’s’ idiocy and pedantic nature on PJM. If I’m going to answer a multitude of questions, I don’t need to be writing a tome like your response. It’s boring and pretentious.

You may be the most sanctimonious person I’ve read on this board. What purpose do you serve?

Well, for starters, he defined many of you quite accurately. You guys slip into name-calling and hyperbole so easily, that one could say that it is a character trait of the righty personality, but then, lefties are essentially the same; they just go off the other end. Your respective beleeeefs, or whatever they are, character tendencies really, make you crazy; therefore, rational discussions are few and far-between.

This is all very besides the point because the very first thing to understand about the Left is they don’t even believe their own propaganda and name-calling. For most of them, calling people racist, teabaggers, homophobes and the rest is just a tactic used to shut down debate and vilify their opponents.

It’s all just a way of “getting over” on others. Even your post is an example. By calling many here “name callers” you seek to control the debate. Now we are supposed to watch our step, pull back on our passion. Nonsense.

We are fighting for our freedom and the very future of our country. The enemy is made up of committed ideologues who have been at war with us for over a century and we didn’t even know it. They took over our institutions including the schools, the entertainment industry and the news media.

Their agenda is the opposite of the founding principles of the United States. Where we seek individual rights, they seek subservience to the State. Where we seek freedom of conscience, they seek monolithic conformity to their agenda. Where we seek a meritocracy and free markets they seek an iron-fisted, centrally planned economy where THEY determine winners and losers based on who kisses their ring the most.

If we do not win the war of ideas we will doom our children and grand children to a bleak existence. For details speak with anyone who grew up in the USSR, China, Eastern Europe, or any one of the other mass murdering Utopias out there founded by another generation of condescending, committed ideologues.

If in the process of fighting them one of us calls them the sonabitches they are, too bad.

Okay, I agree. But my point is that we can’t have it both ways. This article was complaining about how people have such a negative perception about conservatives – i.e., that they think we’re racist, name callers, etc. My point is that, duhh, the reason people see us as name callers is because, duhhh, we do call names, and this blog is the very proof of that.

So, again, we can’t have it both ways. We can either not call names and then get angry that people wrongfully see us as name callers. Or we can call names, and not care that people call us name callers. But we can’t call names and then whine that people think we’re name callers.

For years I have been willing to engage in the debate. I was of the school….in order for evil to flourish, good men(people)must remain silent. Watched a very intelligent, well-informed woman I know become silent when the ultra-lefty liberal, brain-dead made their pronouncements.
Only now, years later, do I understand her silence. You cannot reason with the brain dead. And the scary knowledge is, the brain dead are voting in ever increasing numbers.

Yes, the libs turned out en masse to put Obama in office, but just wait and see how few of them turn out in the next election.

Last time, he’d spent a couple of years razzle-dazzling them with bright-eyed promises of hope and change and all kinds of wonderful things. So they all stampeded to the polls. There has been no change, everyone is left with little hope, and certainly nobody has seen or received any of the wonderful things that were supposed to happen.

Trust me when I tell you that few of my liberal friends have the same motivation to go to the polls that they had on the first go-round. And while they are staying home pouting, the rest of us can go vote for change in America!!

Re the $5000 sofa story: This kind of female behavior serves the purpose of extracting resources from males. But when it is extended to the management of the whole society, the resources never get created in the first place.

Kyle-Anne, in my case (“Ask yourself: when was the last time you freely discussed any conservative or even moderate political view with friends at work, or on campus, or in public . . .”) that has never happened. I lost some “friends” over it at first, and then pretty soon I realized I did not want useful idiots for friends. If I find out someone is a Democrat, I forget about him, and I won’t do business with him unless I’m selling to him, taking his money, not giving him mine.

Good article.
One way to spot the pitfals you cite is to have some conservative leaning libertarians around. For example, we saw through the compassionate conservative garbage of Bush 2 almost immediately. Any real conservative (one who wants both traditional morality and smaller gov) should always keep contact with libertarians to spot the phony conservatives, that use traditional language about God, but are ready to sell us down the river on fiscal policy and individual liberty. And we routinely respond to leftist emotional blackmail, like the racist charge, exactly as you describe, by confronting them with the facts and their logical fallicies, and invalid debate techniques. Libertarians have a need for straight conservatives, like Reagan as well, since they are more likely to have the ability to frame our logical arguments into high sounding phrases that the masses will respond to.

Libertarianism without traditional morality gets us the libertarian party, lots of talk, but constant electoral defeat. But traditional morality without libertarianism gets us Bush 2, and after fiscal ruin, increased regulation, lost liberties, economic disaster, and electoral defeat, Obama. That is one reason I love the Tea Party, they have blended the best features of traditional conservatism with libertarianism. That cooalition of traditional conservatives and libertarians is essential to electoral victory. When that cooalition is stable, like in 1980, 1984, 1994, and 2010, we have landslide victories, and real change. But fracture that cooalition, like when the social conservatives thought they could win without the libertarians, you get Bush 2, and perhaps a narrow temporary victory (2004), but long term ruin.

Since the day they let the Panthers get off scot free in the voter intimidation case I haven’t gone a 24 hour period hedging so much as a semi-colon. Which is why I’ve taken so much heat from those wonderful folks called Republicans.

Yes, Obama, from day one, was out to destroy America. And eats and breathes that desire every day of his miserable miscrant’s life.

Zero will lie, cheat and steal to bring us down. When the World Trade Center buildings came down and he was alone with Michelle that night in their bedroom, they raised their champagne glasses, toasting to the charred bodies that came tumbling.

Then bragged about it one too many times.

A couple more final thoughts.

1. Obama won’t run for a second term.

2. Yelling racial bias at the right no longer works.

3. In his job America speech, Obama was talking to the labor unions who would be hired to do 98% of the work.

4. Obama is a big “C” communist, and Michelle is a bloated, spending spreeing, vactioning pig.

5. The main stream media and the thug labor unions have committed suicide.

Hats off to you. I too try to not just avoid, but slay political correctness. I receive endless grief from conservatives who are too afraid to offend anyone in public. I routinely get thrown off of assorted blogs who can’t deal with someone who refuses to stroke the fragile egos of the liberal children living in adult bodies. Plain talk is near dead, and I am glad there are still a few people who prefer reality to getting along.

Liberals argue not so much like women, but rather like spoiled children. Whatever is right, logical, or necessary is secondary to their own personal needs and desires. Conservatives are the adults who must do whatever is required to make the children safe and happy, and liberals are the children who need coddling and protection. When a child does not get his way, he has a tantrum, just like when liberals don’t get their way. A conservative having a tantrum? It simply isn’t allowed, no more than an adult in the parent-child relationship.

Something that has helped me is to recognize and reverse Alinsky technics.
If accused of racism, I counter with “Since you brought it up, you must be the racist. I wasn’t thinking of race,but you were”.
Currently in CA we are fighting SB48, whihc requires school children be taught ONLY positive things about gays, transgendeds, etc. When accused of homophobia, I reply “I don’t hate Germans, but I want the facts of WW2 taught”

Another Alinsky technique is to make th eenemy live up to their own values, which they can’t . Its easy to think th eLeft has no values, since they don’t have the same values as we do. One weakness I’ve foound is their need to believe they are as tolerant and loving and kind as they demand we should be. So any slander, use of derogatory terms usually of a sexual or scatological nature, and I call them on it. “That would be considered hate speech Are you sure you meant that?” “If you can’t make your point without vulgarity, maybe you don’t have a point to make”. “That doesn’t sound like the civil discourse Obama called for” etc.

Rah, rah, rah – everyone ready for the fight? But is that the way to a conservative administration? Aren’t all you hot-tempered idealists just preaching to the converted?

If only we’d manage to put the same enthusiasm into finding the message that will persuade the ‘undecideds’ to side with us – they’re the ones, after all, who’ll make or break us at the elections in 2012.

One additional observation, KA, is your point number two, where you discuss the lib tactics that you label as being a new spin on “old-as-the-hill female wiles.”

And you use an anecdote where Mr. Reasonable Man’s wife asks him to buy a ridiculously out-of-their-price-range sofa. Mr. Reasonable Man explains to his wife that they can’t afford it, and he explains it in a way that is so kind and reasonable it sounds like he is talking to a 5-year-old child. His wife responds as a 5-year-old child would by whining “You don’t really love me.”

Really? Is this how you think intelligent 21st Century women respond in discussions about household finances? Is this how you discuss household purchases with your husband? Or do you just assume that you are somehow far above the childish and selfish immaturity in which you are certain every other woman on this planet engages?

It’s misogynistic stuff like this that forces me to no longer say “I’m Republican,” but, rather, “I’m independent” (albeit an extremely conservative independent) because I don’t want to be associated with a party where even the women in the party have so little respect for their fellow women that they treat them all like living caricatures of Ricky Ricardo’s wife.

What if Michele Bachmann becomes president? Or Sarah Palin? Do you really think that if Sarah Palin had to go toe-to-toe with Putin on something, she’d use pouting and guilt tactics if the situation didn’t go here way, i.e., “Oh, Vladdy, sniff, sniff, if you liked me you’d let me keep those bases in the Czech Republic, sniff, sniff.”

The Republicans used to be considered the party of the Big Tent (as in they valued every supporter they had). Nowadays, unless you are a middle-aged (or older) white male, you’re made to feel unwelcome in the party (unless, of course, you like being called names or made to feel like a complete dumb-ass).

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I once worked in this one plant, where politics came up very rarely. Some one was concerned about the economy, and the consensus was not to worry about it, since, “They fixed it so a depression couldn’t happen again.” Notice no one mentioned the left or the right. I wanted to contradict this, but had already been told I was a contrarian, and so should watch it.

The only other time a potential liberal/conservative argument came up, was at a different plant. These two fun, gabby women, got into it a bit about homosexuality. One was very tolerant towards them. She was kind of sweet on me. The other one was married. They both had kids, but the married one (a beautiful amazon), was very severe. In the end she said something to the effect, she would disown any kid of hers who was gay. I thought of my self, and the unmarried one, as very liberal about it all. I do not recall thinking of the amazon as conservative. But I did think of her as an intolerant bigot.

I guess the point of this is, this type of thing just doesn’t come up that much at work. Not at factories it doesn’t. Though I tell you, sex comes up all the time in oil fields. It’s practically all they talk about out there. Either that, or drinking, and fighting, and who did what last time.

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